6432 réponses à ce sujet

[luaggy]

I fully support this thread and 3D's many statements, 250 pages in just one month surley can't be ignored.
                                                                                                                                                                               
My personal grievance to me3 endings was the lack of a scene or ending where it felt the hero/heroine truly triumphed i.e faced the great evil and prevailed through it, emotionally and physically scarred a given. When i immerse myself into a vid game, movie or book i tend to attach emotion connection to the lead character as is intended, background, support roles, setting (universe in ME case) are secondary to enrich the protagonists story.
 
What i ask of bioware is for simple scene if not a new ending that rewards the hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars, pounds etc fans have invested over 5 years.

[Femlob]

One Last Plea - Do the Right Thing

They're not going to listen. Most because they're not allowed to, a few because they don't want to - and the 1% doesn't care because the game didn't sell ten million copies.

Modifié par Femlob, 06 octobre 2012 - 10:53 .

[darkway1]

Yeah,Bioware is listening.......some thing to think about,when Mass3,or any game is on the drawing board,they create a battle plan to create the main game and a host of DLC,it's all one big project.Once the main game is released,the creative teams can take a short break and then it's back to work,it's business as normal,I'd guess about 4 DLC's are in the works,multiplayer content and events,bug teams,it's pretty much all systems go from Biowares point of view.......and let's not forget future projects are always simmering in the back ground.

This means that even if they wanted to make content for the fans......they can't because contracts have to be fulfilled,deadlines have to be met,planned DLC needs to be completed......all they can realistically do is try and implement plot fixes,requests etc via the DLC releases.

Once the overall battle plan is complete,who knows what happens........I guess it will all hinge on the direction Mass4 takes.

[t_i_e_]

@OP

You forget your dealing with EA. Everthing they touch degrades in value. From their lies, uncompleted projects and destrution of good studios.

Stop buying their terrible products!!!

[3DandBeyond]

Calamity wrote...

It sounds like we are saying goodbye.

No, no not at all.  I just wanted some things not to go unsaid.

[Verit]

3DandBeyond wrote...
I very much agree with you.  What happens though is that BW keeps shrinking the hopes that people have so it ends up being what is the bare minimum that you might think can at least make it marginally better so it's not a total pile of steaming poop.

The problem here is that, for the people who still want to see changes/additional content for the endings, that bare minimum is very different.  To me, I don't want or need a reunion. I'm sure to some, it would be perfect. It depends on what you want out of the story. In fact I think it's messed up that they included Shepard's survival in Destroy to begin with. It makes it seem like you're trading the lives of EDI and the geth for that of Shepard, and that's probably exactly what it was meant to show. This inevitably leads to conflicting opinions between people's interpretations of the ending. One thing I think we can at least all agree on is that the ending ripped the fanbase apart: http://tvtropes.org/...Main/BrokenBase.

3DandBeyond wrote...
However, refuse isn't a serious attempt to do the story any kind of justice.  And it was not created for fans.

That's exactly how I see it as well. This tweet in particular removed all the meaning out of refuse:
https://twitter.com/...770232138301440. I mean, what a joke. Shepard makes a final stand and refuses to use the Crucible, sacrificing everything he/she ever fought to protect. And then a later cycle uses the Crucible anyway (which was in Reaper hands at that point!). So the Catalyst gets the ending he wants anyway. There's no meaning in this. All Refuse does is tell the player "you should have used the Crucible". I've said this before: Refuse is a glorified game over screen.

3DandBeyond wrote...
That leaves destroy-the biggest most painful joke on fans.  Up until the ending destroy was always what everyone thought the crucible would do and it was the goal.  It was also canon.  The cost for it and the weak explanation of it is forced and contrived to make it not be canon.  It's the least final of all endings-it is not an ending at all.

I again agree.

3DandBeyond wrote...
I refuse to choose.  But, believe me I do not at all prefer that this be the way that they do anything, if they do anything.

I totally get your point. And if they gave us that, then I highly doubt there would be many people left complaining. But it's not what I personally want to see. Basically there's three groups of people left that don't like the current endings:

a) people that want an optimal ending like in Mass Effect 2, where nobody you cared about dies in the final battle. These want a new ending.
people that want a reunion between their LI and Shepard. An extended destroy ending is enough for these people.
c) people that are looking for narrative consistency, like koobismoo or the infamous smudboy. Those that are really looking into the storyline and looking to extract meaning out of it, and fail to find it Those that aren't willing to accept how the Catalyst changes the central conflict of the story. Personally, I'm definitely in this group. Those looking for Conventional victory fall inside this group as well, as it rejects the way the Catalyst tries to change Shepard's objective.

Neither group is "wrong" in asking for what they want. I think most remaining "ending haters" are somewhere in between these groups. But that does make it more difficult for us to make our voice heard. Especially when Bioware doesn't seem to be interested in our thoughts anymore anyway. They seem quite final about how the EC was their "statement" about the ending, I doubt for example Mike Gamble even reads these threads.

EDIT: fixed the links.

Modifié par -Draikin-, 06 octobre 2012 - 03:40 .

[Killdren88]

Femlob wrote...

One Last Plea - Do the Right Thing

They're not going to listen. Most because they're not allowed to, a few because they don't want to - and the 1% doesn't care because the game didn't sell ten million copies.

Its Ea's own fault that ME3 did not get the sales they wanted. What EA refuses to learn is that games becomes worse when they add their changes to a game. ME1 Had no influence from EA and look at it. ME2 was also pretty good. A tad lacking in RPG elements, but it was tolerable. Then we have ME3, Auto Dialouge, Multiplayer that used resources that could have been used for Singleplayer. And of course With held content that should  of been with the game to begin with, but sold as DLC. What Ea refuses to learn or accept is that in most cases their changes make a game worse. And what they need to do it go with the saying of "If it ain't broken, -DON''T- fix it.":bandit:

[darkway1]

Its not EA's fault.....it's the games branching story that was Mass Effects strength but also it's Achilles heel.......branching story means producing content that some people will never see.......I ask,how many happy ending are to be produced to cater for all the LI's......for all the different war assets...the Rachni Queen that some players destroyed........the DLC characters of Mass2 that some people never bought and on and on.........the choice mechanic works from a stand alone game point of view.......as a trilogy it does not......character import and more than a few familiar faces simply created the illusion that it did.

[3DandBeyond]

-Draikin- wrote...

3DandBeyond wrote...
I very much agree with you.  What happens though is that BW keeps shrinking the hopes that people have so it ends up being what is the bare minimum that you might think can at least make it marginally better so it's not a total pile of steaming poop.

The problem here is that, for the people who still want to see changes/additional content for the endings, that bare minimum is very different.  To me, I don't want or need a reunion. I'm sure to some, it would be perfect. It depends on what you want out of the story. In fact I think it's messed up that they included Shepard's survival in Destroy to begin with. It makes it seem like you're trading the lives of EDI and the geth for that of Shepard, and that's probably exactly what it was meant to show. This inevitably leads to conflicting opinions between people's interpretations of the ending. One thing I think we can at least all agree on is that the ending ripped the fanbase apart: http://tvtropes.org/...Main/BrokenBase.

3DandBeyond wrote...
However, refuse isn't a serious attempt to do the story any kind of justice.  And it was not created for fans.

That's exactly how I see it as well. This tweet in particular removed all the meaning out of refuse:
https://twitter.com/...770232138301440. I mean, what a joke. Shepard makes a final stand and refuses to use the Crucible, sacrificing everything he/she ever fought to protect. And then a later cycle uses the Crucible anyway (which was in Reaper hands at that point!). So the Catalyst gets the ending he wants anyway. There's no meaning in this. All Refuse does is tell the player "you should have used the Crucible". I've said this before: Refuse is a glorified game over screen.

3DandBeyond wrote...
That leaves destroy-the biggest most painful joke on fans.  Up until the ending destroy was always what everyone thought the crucible would do and it was the goal.  It was also canon.  The cost for it and the weak explanation of it is forced and contrived to make it not be canon.  It's the least final of all endings-it is not an ending at all.

I again agree.

3DandBeyond wrote...
I refuse to choose.  But, believe me I do not at all prefer that this be the way that they do anything, if they do anything.

I totally get your point. And if they gave us that, then I highly doubt there would be many people left complaining. But it's not what I personally want to see. Basically there's three groups of people left that don't like the current endings:

a) people that want an optimal ending like in Mass Effect 2, where nobody you cared about dies in the final battle. These want a new ending.
people that want a reunion between their LI and Shepard. An extended destroy ending is enough for these people.
c) people that are looking for narrative consistency, like koobismoo or the infamous smudboy. Those that are really looking into the storyline and looking to extract meaning out of it, and fail to find it Those that aren't willing to accept how the Catalyst changes the central conflict of the story. Personally, I'm definitely in this group. Those looking for Conventional victory fall inside this group as well, as it rejects the way the Catalyst tries to change Shepard's objective.

Neither group is "wrong" in asking for what they want. I think most remaining "ending haters" are somewhere in between these groups. But that does make it more difficult for us to make our voice heard. Especially when Bioware doesn't seem to be interested in our thoughts anymore anyway. They seem quite final about how the EC was their "statement" about the ending, I doubt for example Mike Gamble even reads these threads.

EDIT: fixed the links.

I agree that a lot of people want different things as to the endings.  It's always been the case.  I think there are groups that have different bare minimums.  It's also partly why I started this thread.  The idea was for us to ask, beg, cajole, plead, bargain with, and ultimately offer a compromise if BW would act as an honest agent in this as well and would bring something to the table as well.  The thought is for all of us to look at what we see would provide us with the most we can rationally hope for and what we are willing to put up for that.  The other side of that is what is the most BW could rationally offer (after really taking a decent non-drama queen) look at all that happened before, during, and all surrounding the game's release.  The others that have what they want (I really do not think that those that say they do are being totally honest about this, because if you read their posts in other places they say the endings weren't done all that well but were ok enough-most often), those individuals only need compromise by sitting there with what they now have. 

BW can choose to do nothing, but I think this would be a mistake.  No, I don't know this for a fact, but I do know that everything I have read and what I now see as a crack in the wall of the paid reviewers' staunch support for them indicates this would be a huge mistake.  They may have decided to go in another direction with the games.  This too may well be their undoing.  I've read a lot on the fact that the market is over-saturated with CoD and Halo wannabes.  I actually believe that the release of the ME trilogy so near the release of the next CoD and Halo games is being done to purposely test the waters.  It's natural for Halo and CoD to go head to head in many ways-CoD games have lately always been released around the first week in November (usually a birthday present for me). 

The mistake here would be if they decide to take away what makes ME unique and decide to try and grab a piece of an over-saturated market, rather than adhering to what made it good.  After people play a lot of CoD or Halo, they want something different.  ME along with some other games, was that.  The one interview with Casey Hudson about what they thought people wanted in a game had an over-emphasis on the guns you use in it.  I'll be frank here.  I couldn't care less if I was fighting with a flamethrowing toothpick.  He said it was great for players because they could see the gun on a workbench and see the attachments to it.  I don't care about that.  It's fluff and adds nothing to the game.  You get gold guns in CoD, big woop.  It's this idea of superficiality-things that don't matter-and then thinking that items that do matter, don't, that is really messing up ME.  We get to see guns on a workbench and see augmentations, yet the pistol in Shepard's hand at the end on the citadel disappears.  The rock Shepard gives to Tali, disappears.  Shepard's head and eyes do things only a possessed person's would do.  Dialogue is off and doesn't match things that are happening at times and sometimes the people talking to each other are not even really talking to each other-they're looking off in the distance. 

But here's the big problem-we have way more closure for the fate of all the weapons we get to augment but that in the end have nothing to do with the outcome of the war than we have for the hero of the games.  We can upgrade a sniper rifle fully, but we can't win the war with it.  We can see attachments added to guns but we can't see what happens to the hero.

In this thread, I've offered up a way for BW to try and assess all of this-things I think true adults would do.  I've also implicitly asked fans to say what they'd like to see addressed in that assessment-what you all cared and care about.  What's your bare minimum here?  I've spoken for many and said it was that one lacking reunion scene-one that many would have to imagine a lot of other stuff to feel fully good about.  That isn't the only thing "wrong" of course.  And I've been and will keep addressing those other things.  I think all of it has to be about what you logically think they could and might possibly remotely do, what you want, and what you even might pay to see.  It's not for me to decide. I've offered my opinion on things that would work for me.  I want Shepard to have at least the same amount of exposition and closure as guns that are never really used to win, do.

[3DandBeyond]

darkway1 wrote...

Its not EA's fault.....it's the games branching story that was Mass Effects strength but also it's Achilles heel.......branching story means producing content that some people will never see.......I ask,how many happy ending are to be produced to cater for all the LI's......for all the different war assets...the Rachni Queen that some players destroyed........the DLC characters of Mass2 that some people never bought and on and on.........the choice mechanic works from a stand alone game point of view.......as a trilogy it does not......character import and more than a few familiar faces simply created the illusion that it did.

Actually, think about that for a minute.  If they can make different slides as well as somewhat different memorial wall scenes, they could really have done more.

Just take (for instance) a reunion scene.  I'm not saying it's the be all and end all for what's wrong.  It's an example.  That memorial wall scene could merely have been a quick shot of say Anderson and EDI's (ugh) names and a fade out to the Normandy taking off, faded into a similarly arranged scene (you would not even have to move the character's around much-I've done computer modeling and handled scenes before, they could have just mostly changed the setting).  They could have changed the location to some say hospital room and had these same people standing there, along with the appropriate LI.  Gasp, yes an additional person in some cases.  The camera angle could have been different, with the player not readily knowing what's happening or where it is.  The camera could move in and then you'd see that they are looking at Shepard (yes, your Shepard) and your LI steps forward.  That's it.  If they could make a customized Memorial Wall scene, they could do that.

As well, the slides are different (somewhat) based upon what you did in the games, even all 3.

The problem wasn't with them carrying decisions from ME1-2-3, it was that they tried too hard to make it so none of the decisions in ME1 and 2 would harm the games for those who played neither.  The problem was they needed to have one standard set of decisions that existed for all games and that would be made no matter which game you started the series with.  They needed to always include a decision maker like genesis for ME2 and 3, included with every game.  I think they thought that would be more expensive and a potential money maker as optional content, but I think it is far more expensive and problematic to say have to include content and decisions from Virmire that have superficial but no real impact for one game and then delete all of that and substitute content for it in another game.  Also, doing all of that added to the complexity of the decisions and dialogue and I have no doubt it added to the size of ME3.  The game itself could have been bigger if not better, had they included issues from ilos and virmire and feros and noveria and omega and all of that, rather than make 3 basically different versions of ME3.  They needed to include backstory and decision making if you started at ME2 and if you only started with ME3-it would have made for a more cohesive story and for a simpler decision tree.

[darkway1]

Seriously guy's....you have idea's but no one is giving any thought as to how you implement them.....when people talk of uniting Shepard with Love interest at the end.....do you realise the work involved in order to make everyone happy.??????

[Ozida]

darkway1 wrote...

Seriously guy's....you have idea's but no one is giving any thought as to how you implement them.....when people talk of uniting Shepard with Love interest at the end.....do you realise the work involved in order to make everyone happy.??????

What do you intend? Teach developers how to do their work? Re-design Tali's face? Write dialogues for writers?.. I though we actually paid them to do that in ME3 in the first place. <_<

[darkway1]

A simple example...Kaidan...you bump into him in Mass2.....romance him in Mass3....create ending scene with Kaiden............in my Mass story the guy's died in Mass1.........look at all that work that has been created spanning the cameo in Mass2 and his return in Mass3 .....all of it I will never see.........from a creative point of view,in not a very constructive way to produce content.

[darkway1]

Continuing player choice over several games has never been done before......Mass Effect is the first to try........do you think it succeeded?

[3DandBeyond]

darkway1 wrote...

Seriously guy's....you have idea's but no one is giving any thought as to how you implement them.....when people talk of uniting Shepard with Love interest at the end.....do you realise the work involved in order to make everyone happy.??????

With all due respect, did you read my post regarding that?  Many of us have given very specific ideas on how to implement that.  It wouldn't be that hard.  If they could do a customized Memorial Wall scene then they could do that.  Just take a look at what they did show and substitute a different scene.

I've said I worked with 3D modeling (I use a CAD program now for plans I make) and I used the same programs once upon a time that the creators of Babylon 5 used.  Lightwave and the video toaster-on an Amiga, and yes it was called a toaster that was for tv production.

You created characters-models, a 3D object.  Then, in some cases the setting is merely a backdrop (I even use real photos in my CAD work), but the Memorial Wall is more complex and it is more like one huge object with other things inside it.  Like you could create a cube with a bunch of spheres within it-simplistic version.  Instead of the Wall and the Normandy, you put all of those people into a hospital room.  That's like exchanging cylinder for the cube-again a simplistic version.

All you are doing is exchanging the overall setting.  And they already had a pre-made hospital setting with the modelling done for the Lazarus Project.  They could have used that for the room instead of the Memorial Wall.  Minimum effort.

[MegaSovereign]

darkway1 wrote...

Continuing player choice over several games has never been done before......Mass Effect is the first to try........do you think it succeeded?

For the most part yes. And overtime future videogames that try to pull this feature off will have a better time doing so with increased budget and better hardware/software.

alleyd wrote...
What the issue is that the ending structure makes no account for previous gamplay and decisions over the series. The choices and consequences are the same, regardless of the decisions made.

EMS could have been handled better but the idea behind that was to tie in all of your choices with how successful the Crucible is. With the EC there was also epilogue scenes showing the results of your major choices.

Modifié par MegaSovereign, 06 octobre 2012 - 05:05 .

[3DandBeyond]

darkway1 wrote...

Continuing player choice over several games has never been done before......Mass Effect is the first to try........do you think it succeeded?

Again, respectfully, did you read my post?  It didn't because they didn't create one version and tried to create way too many instead of requiring everyone to start from a set of decisions in each game.  It's something they could learn to do better going forward, but I don't think they will, because they saw Genesis as a way to get more money.  It's included for the PS3 version of ME2, but if someone on the xbox only buys ME2, they have to pay for Genesis if they want it.  Now, they will have something similar for the Wii U.  It should never have been pay for content-it should have been something that forced everyone to play starting at the same point where different decisions could be made, but everyone had certain similar choices.


For instance, everyone should be on the same page when starting ME2.  Everyone should know there were decisions made on Virmire-Kaidan or Ashley died.  You killed or didn't kill Wrex.  These are in the Genesis comic.  But there's more.  Ilos and Vigil, Sovereign and so on, Udina or Anderson, the council or the fleet, all of these are in Genesis.  Who was your LI and so on.  But none of these should be optional decisions or decisions you don't know about going forward.  I think there are 16 decisions that ME2 takes into account (I might be off on the number).  Then comes ME3.  There is no way for a new player to make those 16 decisions or to even know anything about them-but they should.  And then they also should be given backstory about ME2 and have a decision maker for that as well.  That way there would be a more stream-lined way of creating a story from all that going forward.  As it is now, there are too many things that one person could do and that others didn't do or don't know, so instead of creating content for it, they ignore it.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 06 octobre 2012 - 05:12 .

[Bob the Elcor]

With depression, I doubt anything will change, no matter what anyone does, with slight hope, but I doubt, not know, so add my name to the list.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

3DandBeyond wrote...

The problem wasn't with them carrying decisions from ME1-2-3, it was that they tried too hard to make it so none of the decisions in ME1 and 2 would harm the games for those who played neither.  The problem was they needed to have one standard set of decisions that existed for all games and that would be made no matter which game you started the series with.  They needed to always include a decision maker like genesis for ME2 and 3, included with every game.  I think they thought that would be more expensive and a potential money maker as optional content, but I think it is far more expensive and problematic to say have to include content and decisions from Virmire that have superficial but no real impact for one game and then delete all of that and substitute content for it in another game.  Also, doing all of that added to the complexity of the decisions and dialogue and I have no doubt it added to the size of ME3.  The game itself could have been bigger if not better, had they included issues from ilos and virmire and feros and noveria and omega and all of that, rather than make 3 basically different versions of ME3.  They needed to include backstory and decision making if you started at ME2 and if you only started with ME3-it would have made for a more cohesive story and for a simpler decision tree.

So if you were a new player for ME3, they needed to include a Genesis for ME1 AND ME2 to bring the player up to ME3, and have these Genesis contents include the DLCs as well just so that they could have written a better story for ME3. This would include the player decision of whether or not to honor Hackett's request to rescue Kenson, which you could do or not do since it wasn't a requirement to complete ME2, nor was it an order since you were no longer a military officer at the time. That quest became available immediately after Horizon. If you chose not to, Shepard would say "I told Hackett that I was focusing on the Collectors and would get to it if I had time. After the Suicide Mission, I had EDI access the Alpha Relay to try and do the rescue and she couldn't map the jump. The relay was gone."

In fact due to the complexities of the inquest they were going to have, this would have been a good way of doing it. Your character import goes into ME3, and for many of us it had been a while, so you get on screen (in larger font than they used please) a summary of your events thus far, then a short narrative from your Commander Shepard (Hale or Meer) with a short "Genesis" as to what you were doing for the few months on earth. They spent the first month trying to figure out if you were civilian, military, council, or terrorist (arrival only). You had to get yourself declared officially alive again. If you did Arrival there was the big inquest which she describes goes on until your counsel calls Hackett as a hostile witness then Anderson settles it. If not, you were stuck in Vancouver waiting for your re-commission, security clearance and all that rot to clear because of this Cerberus thing. Besides you had no ship and nowhere else to go. The Alliance assigned Vega to keep an eye on you because Cerberus is considered a terrorist organization even though you saved earth colonies bordering the terminus. You thought that was bull****, but you went along with it not because you had a choice.

Then it cuts to current events at the start.

Why this way? How do you role play your character, who is supposed to keep her mouth shut in the court room while her counselor does all the talking?

If this is what you're saying I'm in full agreement. It needed to be included with the game, and not optional even if it meant a third DVD.

But with this all said, I have to say that ME3 has scarred me for life. I'm playing Borderlands 2, and I can see them poking fun at the series in places. If you haven't noticed it yet you will.

[CaIIisto]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...
But with this all said, I have to say that ME3 has scarred me for life. I'm playing Borderlands 2, and I can see them poking fun at the series in places. If you haven't noticed it yet you will.

You're lucky. I can't even face playing anything else yet. It's ruined gaming for me.

[Xellith]

Bester76 wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...
But with this all said, I have to say that ME3 has scarred me for life. I'm playing Borderlands 2, and I can see them poking fun at the series in places. If you haven't noticed it yet you will.

You're lucky. I can't even face playing anything else yet. It's ruined gaming for me.

Took me a few days before I played anything else.  ME3 left me feeling hollow and dirty.

[Iakus]

Bester76 wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...
But with this all said, I have to say that ME3 has scarred me for life. I'm playing Borderlands 2, and I can see them poking fun at the series in places. If you haven't noticed it yet you will.

You're lucky. I can't even face playing anything else yet. It's ruined gaming for me.

I went back to easrlier Bioware games.  Jade Empire, DAO (my Aeducan will sacrifice himself, and it will be a sacrifice worth making) and hopefully soon the BG Enhanced Edition will be out. as well.

It is sad to see how far Bioware has fallen.  But these games are still available to be enjoyed.

[Xellith]

If I ever end up with a cheating Gamer Girlfriend Im gonna be like "you ME3'd me you B****!"