Mass Effect 3

[Slott]

Not sure why you dislike Vanguards for golds - they're disgusting if you abuse Nova evade + dodge dancing on the mobs that can 1 shot you (banshees, brutes, atlas, etc) - guaranteed high score in every gold game, even over the Asari Adept.

While I don't disagree, the number of "good" vanguards can be counted on one hand, while the amount that think HURRRRRR CHARGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE is astronomical and costs you a match. High scores don't even matter in the reality of things - for example, the usefulness of "stasis" yet that ability grants 0 points, same for sabotage (unless the geth kills something) cryo blast etc. Points are 100% damage based, and damage alone doesn't win gold. That being said, I haven't had the luxury of seeing a good vanguard in gold yet, only the awful ones.

[-Zer0-]

Anyone notice that having TOO much stability actually hinders you rather than helps you? It actually has the opposite effect of stabilizing and actually forces you to manually stabilize your gun upwards when you shouldn't have to do so at all...

[rezn0r]

<<removed because of new policy/copyright issues>>

[Drai]

The ending is fine, I don't care that it was a sad ending, I just want all the gaps filled in, so many plot holes left open and loose ends untied >.>

[Tarage]

I'm not convinced. What Muzyka said basically says "We aren't changing how the ending happened, but we'll let you see more of it."

That doesn't sit well with me because the ending is fundamentally flawed and should be changed, not 'enhanced'.

[Meresgi]

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/

Spoiler: show

As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.

I believe passionately that games are an art form, and that the power of our medium flows from our audience, who are deeply involved in how the story unfolds, and who have the uncontested right to provide constructive criticism. At the same time, I also believe in and support the artistic choices made by the development team. The team and I have been thinking hard about how to best address the comments on ME3’s endings from players, while still maintaining the artistic integrity of the game.

Mass Effect 3 concludes a trilogy with so much player control and ownership of the story that it was hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it. The journey you undertake in Mass Effect provokes an intense range of highly personal emotions in the player; even so, the passionate reaction of some of our most loyal players to the current endings in Mass Effect 3 is something that has genuinely surprised us. This is an issue we care about deeply, and we will respond to it in a fair and timely way. We’re already working hard to do that.

To that end, since the game launched, the team has been poring over everything they can find about reactions to the game – industry press, forums, Facebook, and Twitter, just to name a few. The Mass Effect team, like other teams across the BioWare Label within EA, consists of passionate people who work hard for the love of creating experiences that excite and delight our fans. I’m honored to work with them because they have the courage and strength to respond to constructive feedback.

Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.

The reaction to the release of Mass Effect 3 has been unprecedented. On one hand, some of our loyal fans are passionately expressing their displeasure about how their game concluded; we care about this feedback, and we’re planning to directly address it. However, most folks appear to agree that the game as a whole is exceptional, with more than 75 critics giving it a perfect review score and a review average in the mid-90s. Net, I’m proud of the team, but we can and must always strive to do better.

Some of the criticism that has been delivered in the heat of passion by our most ardent fans, even if founded on valid principles, such as seeking more clarity to questions or looking for more closure, for example – has unfortunately become destructive rather than constructive. We listen and will respond to constructive criticism, but much as we will not tolerate individual attacks on our team members, we will not support or respond to destructive commentary.

If you are a Mass Effect fan and have input for the team – we respect your opinion and want to hear it. We’re committed to address your constructive feedback as best we can. In return, I’d ask that you help us do that by supporting what I truly believe is the best game BioWare has yet crafted. I urge you to do your own research: play the game, finish it and tell us what you think. Tell your friends if you feel it’s a good game as a whole. Trust that we are doing our damndest, as always, to address your feedback. As artists, we care about our fans deeply and we appreciate your support.

Thank you for your feedback – we are listening.

Ray

Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics

Most of which were told to review the game as high as they did.

BioWare-Mythic senior creative director Paul Barnett was also in attendance at the event. He said authors of artwork should have total control over their creations, referencing J.K. Rowling and the conclusion to the Harry Potter saga.

I like how that is said, even though it's not even what most fans are upset about. People are pissed about being told one thing and then seeing that Bioware completely 180'd on a ton of statements and gave us 1 ending with 3 colors.

[WahiGuard]

Have any of you beaten Gold? The furthest I've gotten was wave 7 or 8 with random people. Feels bad man.

I'd like to successfully do Gold runs for the sweet sweet credits but it seems like more trouble than its worth.

Plenty of times, Even Gold Reapers.

[Tarage]

Most of which were told to review the game as high as they did.

They honestly don't care. They are insulted that we don't love their game as much as they do, and are going to placate us with small improvements without actually ripping out the ending and replacing it with something that isn't ass.

I'm not buying another Bioware game again.

[Meresgi]

They honestly don't care. They are insulted that we don't love their game as much as they do, and are going to placate us with small improvements without actually ripping out the ending and replacing it with something that isn't ass.

I'm not buying another Bioware game again.

Same, Dragon Age 2 made me very suspicious...Mass Effect 3 has made me not want to pay them a penny for anymore shit they come out with.

[WahiGuard]

[QUOTE=Plow;5108429]

Spoiler: show

We built the fucking crucible in like a week lol, doesn't seem like a hard project for a group like the reapers, really.

Actually...

Spoiler: show

The game takes place over a few months, Shepard says so close to the end.

And about the Citadel..

Spoiler: show

The Illusive Man tells the Reapers what the Catalyst is

About doing Geth runs A bunch of Quarians with Sabotage and SR isn`t optimal. Since Sabotage/AI Hack was nerfed(really a person soloed Gold Geth with just sabotage)
My best run was a Krogan Soldier, Quarian Infl, Human Infl. and me Salarian Engineer(one of my favorite classes) Throw out Decoy and just watch the Geth stop and attack the Decoy(with 2k shields it can take a beating) have everyone pick off the Geth. If flanked Sabotage is handy. Decoy is really like a shield wall it keeps the Geth from advancing and when Primes begin spawning 6 or 7 Geth will be crowded together. Because the Geth are stronger when Primes spawn and are more organized. This was with randoms too, so Geth are doable.

An even better run with randoms I had on gold Geth was an Asari Adept, Human Sentinel Quarian Infil. and me Salarian Engineer. The Asari freaking rocked, Just Warp and Throw again and again. He or she totaled close to 90k that match.

So it goes without saying, since we all played FFXI that skill is more important than your class. Cept with brd and rdm...

[BadKarma]

Which is a shame because ME3 is an absolutely incredible game 99% of the time. The ending however is rage inducing

[Meresgi]

http://www.gamerzines.com/playstatio...l#comment-1060


Here's some more rage for everyone.

Whatever you think of the branching endings, they have at least provoked a lot of chatter amongst fans. In our opinion whatever ending you get absolutely makes sense in the grand scheme and leaves the series in a very interesting place for the inevitable sequel, while offering sufficient closure.

Nobody complains about the endings of games in similarly successful franchises such as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed, but that’s usually because series of that ilk don’t have story at their core and players don’t care about the characters involved

we suspect that the real reason people are unhappy is that the ending of the third game radically alters the sci-fi universe’s status quo.

Funny, I thought the status quo for the past few years has been "twist" and "surprise" endings that make no sense to get the viewer to "think" because the company/artist is just sooooo edgy.

[Krazy]

I love Bioware. Ultimate troll is ultimate.

[Souj]

Yall just on the internet bandwagon. The ending wasn't terrible. Not great, definitely, but no where near as bad as the Internet is saying. Hell, Yahtzee only gave the ending like a single sentence and it wasn't all that negative. And even if the ending was as super, ultra, stabbing newborn babies in the penis, horrible, it was just the ending cutscene that everyone is banging on with their 10 foot long raging hate-boners.
Awwww the video game that most people say is pure awesome 90% of the time and is a story about a glorified army recruit had a bad 3 minute cutscene at the end. Oh dear god what have they done? Send swarms of complaints to the BBB! Demand refunds! Condemn the entire game that most people probably continued to play after they rage so hard against it!
There's a dozen other actual problems with the game yet no one's voicing their opinions about them. Dragon Age 2, another Boiware game was ten times worse than ME3 yet there was nothing that could be compared to this.

[Meresgi]

Yall just on the internet bandwagon. The ending wasn't terrible. Not great, definitely, but no where near as bad as the Internet is saying. Hell, Yahtzee only gave the ending like a single sentence and it wasn't all that negative. And even if the ending was as super, ultra, stabbing newborn babies in the penis, horrible, it was just the ending cutscene that everyone is banging on with their 10 foot long raging hate-boners.
Awwww the video game that most people say is pure awesome 90% of the time and is a story about a glorified army recruit had a bad 3 minute cutscene at the end. Oh dear god what have they done? Send swarms of complaints to the BBB! Demand refunds! Condemn the entire game that most people probably continued to play after they rage so hard against it!
There's a dozen other actual problems with the game yet no one's voicing their opinions about them. Dragon Age 2, another Boiware game was ten times worse than ME3 yet there was nothing that could be compared to this.

The series ran through 3 very amazing games, all of which were based upon moral choices and how they effected you the player in the game universe throughout your time. Things you did in Mass Effect 1 could come back to haunt you in Mass Effect 3, it all tied together and NO ONE is saying Mass Effect 3 isn't a good game, or even a great game it is. I think people need to understand that, the internet bandwagoning isn't about the game as a whole, it's about the last 10 minutes of the game which completely nuke the shit out of everything else you had done up until that point through the previous 2 games and current game.

The plot holes are outstanding for one, the lack of closure is another huge glaring issue...but for me and a lot of other people it's more about the fact that Bioware sat there, telling us how the game would end and all the choices we would be given and how each ending would be based upon how our Shepard was formed throughout the series resulting in a final climax...and then we got 1 ending with 3 different colors and a couple seconds of differing video...one of which goes completely against the entire premise of the game itself.

People bitched about DA2..but DA2 didn't have nearly as much of a fanbase or following, and was not set up as a huge overarching story the same way Mass Effect has been.

If I can find it, I can link a huge post on the Bioware forums from a screenplay writer who actually talks about why the ending is creating such an uproar and how horribly written it was. Not to mention the entire writing staff had to sit by while 1 guy wrote a crazy J.J. Abrahms ending and called it "artistic" which I have a huge issue over...creating something with tons of glaring plotholes and no closure and saying "well I did it that way to make YOU think about it all" is such a lazy ass excuse.

[Souj]

Serious Question; What are the plot holes? I may have missed them but I don't recall any.
p.s. A race of characters having stupid reasons for doing things is not a plot hole. Hell, maybe they had very good reasons to do what they did but we just weren't informed of it.

I'll agree that it's bullshit that there are barely any differential endings, and how none of your decisions you made in earlier games mattered at all.That's my biggest complaint. If you did something differently with certain characters or races, they would just be replaced by other characters and nothing else at all would change. but that's not what most of the people complaining are complaining about.

[BadKarma]

The plothole is: A) Why was the Normandy running B) What the fuck happened to everyone else?

[Slott]

Because when you wait 2 years for the 3rd installment for a game you enjoyed immensely, tried hard to get a perfect setup for the 3rd game, replay the game immediately since you enjoyed it enough (hell I even played da2 again right after beating it), I didn't get that sense of fulfillment from ME3. All of the preparation and work from me1 to me2, and trying to be well prepared for the reapers, all for there to be very little involvement of the reapers at all throughout the game. How often do you actually encounter this so called conflict vs the reapers? Or was it mostly a game played against cerberus? You fight one total reaper in the game, and you used some souped up laser gun. Hell there wasn't even a real boss fight in the game from a reaper, only cerberus. Edi's body? cerb, Kai Leng? cerb. Miranda's father's place thingy that I don't remember? Cerb. Who came to stop the cure for the genophage?

So finally, you kill off all of this cerberus fodder bullshit that makes it harder to get at the reapers, and what happens? Sweet you get lasered, walk at a snails pace, and every single decision, every single attempt you put forth towards the game went out the window. Man, you can't even defend yourself from the reaper that trashes your shepard down to a pistol wielding zombie. That's why the ending feels so empty - because this so called reaper threat in the game wasn't even the games main focus, cerberus was. ...And then you get hit by that ending, and it's just like...really? I did all that for...this?

ME3 was fun, combat was fun, the dialogue was fun and enjoyable, it made me laugh (they overdid mordin's singing - it made me laugh the first time it came up but it ended up being in every one of his lines) but this wasn't the ending to a reaper invasion we all envisioned, since the reapers weren't the main antagonist in the game.

Also to your argument about DA2 being worse than ME3? Shepard is the main character in ME1, ME2, ME3. Dragon age 2 is not a sequel to dragon age 1, it takes place with a different "hero" It's not super mario bros to super mario bros 2. It's like saying tidus never got a piece of sephiroth, when they're completely separate games. That being said, aside from the lack of exploration in DA2, the combat, dialogue and fights were fairly fun, and the DLC was pretty cool too.

[Souj]

The plothole is: A) Why was the Normandy running B) What the fuck happened to everyone else?

You consider those plotholes? They outwardly state in the game How/where/why those things. Unless B is referring to the very end. And even then, things left unexplained are not plot holes.

@Slott
You spend the entire first game trying to stop 1 Reaper. You spend the entire 2nd game trying to stop the "birth" of 1 Reaper. How would it have been better story wise if suddenly youre dropping 20-30 Reapers with just your 2 squadmates and your guns and biotics? Youre mission is never "Kill the Reapers!" It's "Gather up all our resources so we can have a giant army to defeat the Reapers!".
And Cerberus is just as much of a threat as the reapers are in the game. The whole game, Cerberus is shown as a horrible organization with shady ideas and that are willing to sacrifice everyone for the goals of a single person. Hell, your very first mission in the game (which you are forced to go into first) is against Cerberus.



I consider myself a pessimist and I like to complain about a lot of stuff, but most of this stuff is just silly hating. Feels like I'm in the Bleach thread.

[Slott]

Also I'll be farming gold today for quite a bit, since I saw some interest earlier in the thread, figured I'd throw the offer out there.