This:
And this:
Does not compute.
Right there you're assuming subpar quality to base your verdict on that BioWare's effort wouldn't be worth it.
Really? Does not compute?
Which part confuses- that a first-person perspective requires trade-offs in capabilities and abilities from a third-perspon perspective, or that a company with 7-odd games of experience in doing third-person perspectives (ME1-3, DA1-3, Jade Empire) is not going to have the equivalent experinece and practice when trying a first-person perspective for the first time?
If the concept of practice increasing skill and reliability confuses you, that'd be one thing. But if you don't think that a company will do just as well on the first attempt with one style of story-telling as if it had a decade, then you're being silly.
It's a self-referential argument that you've been spinning the whole time.
Of course the effort isn't worth it if the basis for your argument equals failure to begin with.
Incorrect, on two grounds.
The first is that you're reaching for a tautological fallacy- 'this will be a bad game because it's a bad game' when in fact you're addressing a simple context-based prediction, 'there will be a drop in quality because the basis for quality are missing.' One confuses effect for cause- the other is simply cause and effect. Temporal inversion is a fallacy, the temporal linearity is not.
The second is that you're trying to define define my standards for success and failure. My basis isn't simply quality- it's the the question of the merits of appealing to the consumer base. I'm indifferent about the quality if it claims a major new consumer base: ME1 was a mediocre shooter, but at least it got its foot in the door of a shooter market, and then became good. If we only face a marginal expansion of the consumer base, though, and one that comes mutually-exclusive with an equivalent category, then the returns are marginal at best- and I'd rather a good quality than a mediocre that doesn't benefit the company as much.
And please don't try to regurgitate the point of "cost" again. Unless you have accurate insider informations, you can't make any reasonable guesses as to what it would cost them and if you intend to refer to the tweet that got this thread rolling, that was an answer to a question that specified the MP component alone which (if you'll allow me the same range of speculation you've shown so far) could just as well mean the developer understood the question as in people asking for an additional perspective option to TP, or just as easily as a question directly related to ME:A which is already in production and such drastic changes at this stage would obviously involve too much workload/expenses.
We do have relevant, accurate information. We also have basic knowledge of economics.
Games cost time and money. They cost money for animators, and designers, and writers, and everything else. We know that people have specializations- again, including all that Bioware has developed over the last decade in it's modern incarnation. We know that these people have gotten experience, and specialization, in building third-person narrative structures. We know, by their admissions, that animation is a hard thing when there are even minor character differences in play- the difficulty of multi-race romances in Dragon Age- we can understand, through our own familiarity with systems, that those difficulties (and thus costs) would escalate if we increased perspectives by trying to support both.
Of course, we can also say we won't. That we'll do one or the other. This saves the cost of doing both- but means we have opportunity costs instead.
We know, by the amazing ideas of opportunity-cost and basic limits of time, that people can't do two things at the same time. A Bioware animator can work on a third-person sequence, or a first person sequence, but can't work on both at the same time. These are mutually exclusive- and in the context of just being mutually exclusive, we know the one that is not done will be the opportunity cost. If a developer does a third person, the cost is that they're passing on the first person. If they do FP, the cost is the third person. Which is 'better' will depend, among other things, on which the person is better at- and between a decade of institutional experience on one hand, and no equivalent experience on the other, the opportunity cost on quality grounds is already biased.
Of course, we could also look at the idea of simply hiring new devs. People who will be skilled in FP- even equivalently so. But this is a question of new resources- and resources have cost, not only in thier own right (those new skilled people cost money), but in the costs that the money is not going to instead. Are we hiring these first-person people at the cost of the third-person, letting old staff go? Are we passing on another, new, intellectual property? Are we creating redundancy by having both FP and TP staffs on hand at the same time? There's always an opportunity cost.
As such, if we eliminate the phantom of those "costs" for a thought experiment we're back to what you called a Strawman argument: what makes you think BioWare couldn't deliver a satisfying experience if they tried?
This is why it's a strawman argument: you're presenting a position I have not claimed. You are both ignoring the argument I am making ('costs') and claiming I'm making one I haven't ('couldn't.)
I think Bioware could potentially deliver a 'satisfying' experience. I've never said they couldn't- but 'could' is irrelevant to my argument. 'Could' in this case means 'may,' which is signficiantly less likely than 'will', which is what I'd give to a proven core skill set that the company has a decade of experience in.
The reason why I think they are less likely to give a satisfying experience are, as I've repeated, a matter of their own skill-set experience. The reasons I doubt it would be worth the effort and risk is a matter of markets and consumer base.
Or maybe something less contrived:
You've been looking at it from the perspective from the production value overshadowing the quality, thus an underwhelming reception and ultimately low return in sales.
Now turn that around and assume the product quality would be satisfying to you as a customer. Would you buy the game even though you already have ME games in TP to enjoy or would you not?
Sure- but you gave yourself a no-win situation argument there, because I already buy Mass Effect games. Changing perspectives doesn't bring me in as a consumer- the only change I can make is to stop being a consumer. Things can only get worse.
I'd buy a satisfactory FP-Mass Effect... but the key words are 'satisfactory' and 'Mass Effect.' Not because of the First Person perspective. First person perspective itself would be irrelevant to my purchasing decision- and thus only relevant if it impacts my enjoyment enough to stop buying. It's a wasted effort and a needless risk at best for the people most interested in me buying their product, because I'm already a reliable consumer.
If first person does not change my buying decisions in Bioware's favor, then it's not a beneficial change for Bioware in relation to me. Any additional costs acrued in making the change- hiring new animators with first-person experience, more hours worked for inexperienced animators to unlearn old habits and try new things- are wasted resources that could be spent elsewhere, or not spent at all. The only way it increases Bioware's bottom line and be beneficial vis-a-vis me as a consumer is if it actually costs Bioware less money- if they save on animators because they don't have to have such intricate scenes and so save on the animation issues.
Bioware doesn't gain me as a consumer if they switch to first person. They only lose me if they their quality, both first person or third person, drops sufficiently- and that's a risk (not a guarantee, but a risk) that becomes greater with attempting a new style. In making the attempt, they are making a gambling where they can not come out ahead with me- if it works out, they don't lose. If it fails, they just lose. In no combination do they get more from me than they did before.
But that's just me you asking me about- but I'm not the market being sought by a perspective change, because I'm already a consumer of the third-person stuff. The only people Bioware can gain are those who aren't already buying Mass Effect- the first-person-only crowd- and pursuing those people with a first-person game will only come at the expense of the third-person-only crowd.
Because it is evident that the overarching position we're taking in our assumption as to how the game might work out are each other's anti-thesises.
Nah. What's more evident is that you're trying really hard to avoid the delimmas of whether a change you'd like would actually be a good business decision.
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