But the Facebook page mainly seems to be trying to sell me Mass Effect bikinis (or whatever piece of merch it is this week), which is not really what I'm looking for.
This really made me laugh. I so hear you. Future communication with fans in a nutshell 
I'm sure I definitely won't be blocked on facebook & twitter if I tell them I disliked ME:A (after completing it) /s
For those who are saying that r/dragonage is hostile to people from BSN, they've put up a nice welcoming post with a detailed guide. Not sure what the Mass Effect Subreddit have done though.
I'm sure I definitely won't be blocked on facebook & twitter if I tell them I disliked ME:A (after completing it) /s
For those who are saying that r/dragonage is hostile to people from BSN, they've put up a nice welcoming post with a detailed guide. Not sure what the Mass Effect Subreddit have done though.
Obviously you are just a toxic troll who should be blocked and summarily dismissed if you end up disliking it.
and the fact that the overall initial reaction over there was heavily skewed towards "YAY! FINALLY that place is dead! Ugh, hope none of them come over here" is more than enough to make me not want to participate, even if I viewed Reddit as a viable substitute to this place.
Obviously you are just a toxic troll who should be blocked and summarily dismissed if you end up disliking it.
and the fact that the overall initial reaction over there was heavily skewed towards "YAY! FINALLY that place is dead! Ugh, hope none of them come over here" is more than enough to make me not want to participate, even if I viewed Reddit as a viable substitute to this place.
Bioware is breaking up with us. It's not us...it's them.
Guess I'm going to check out reddit and tumblr.
I feel like Bioware is literally dumping me because I am too fat.
That's how hurtful this is.
That's pretty heartless.
Well. I guess this place is getting nuked.
Too bad.
Now, I'm not one of the people who's been here since the beginning. And I'm not one of the regulars, posting every day. (This will only be post 27, in fact.)
I started coming here for the legacy NWN stuff, then came again after Inquisition came out--mainly due to its bugs. (Because the EA support site is beyond worthless.) But I kept coming, even as the game got patched up, for the other bits. Some was just "how do I find item X for side quest 47?" And then there were all the other crazy discussions. Some were just plain silly, some were serious discussion of lore. Sometimes, it got a bit heated (pro-mage v pro-templar, pro-elf v not, etc.) But even at it's worst, I never saw much of the "toxic" aspect you heard about. Sure, a few people got a bit heated, but there generally wasn't the same degree of deep nastiness as you can find elsewhere. (I'm sure there must have been a couple nasty posts here and there, but they were buried under all the good stuff, and the casual visitor (me) didn't notice them too much.)
So now, the forums are being shut down. And we're supposed to go to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, or create our own communities on Reddit or Tumblr.
But the Facebook page mainly seems to be trying to sell me Mass Effect bikinis (or whatever piece of merch it is this week), which is not really what I'm looking for.
Twitter has that tiny character limit; what's the point? (It's good for links to things that are elsewhere, I guess.)
YouTube is good for videos, but not for discussion (and the video comments can get much more "toxic" than here). I'll watch your trailers there. But I would have been doing that anyway.
Instagram is photos, short videos. Not very interactive. Not much point.
Then there's Reddit and Tumblr. Reddit is hideous, and I find it hard to follow the threads; but at least it's a forum.
On Tumblr, it gets mixed in with everything else I follow. (Tumblr's sky-high dramallama quotient is another matter.)
None of these is a good replacement for this forum, especially not given how lore- and plot-heavy some of BW's games are. And none of these other places will build a community the same way as this place has.
And then there's the stated reason: it's hard for the devs to talk to us here, because they're off on those other sites.
But as a few dozen people have already mentioned, people talked to each other just fine, on these boards.
And frankly, I don't know how I'd talk to a dev on Facebook--ask questions about the next game in a comment when they post an ad for a licensed hoodie? I think not. Seems even harder on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. And don't get me started on "in-person" at events. The company is going to send devs to those events for promotion, not to get detailed feedback. (And I don't go to these events anyway, so there's that.)
And that gets to the fundamental issue. I don't think BW wants much feedback. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are fine for promotion of the products (games, bikinis, whatever). But they can't match forums for getting feedback--especially not the kind of in-depth feedback some of the folks on this forum are capable of.
Right now, the devs (who allegedly don't come to the forums much) could come here and see what their most dedicated fans are talking about. They could see the latest discussions about elves, mages, quarians, whatever. They could see what people think makes sense in the lore, versus what doesn't. They could use the forums as a way to shore up weak spots in the lore, or get ideas for new directions to take things in. And frankly, they could enjoy the fact that they helped create a world that spawned such animated discussions.
And on a more nuts-and-bolts level, this is a direct way for BW to see what bugs are in its games. These games are huge, any more--a billion moving parts, it feels like. Nobody likes bugs, but they're a reality. There will be bugs. Will it really be more efficient to have people tweet them? Does BW want to have someone read ten thousand "There's this bug..." tweets when Andromeda launches? (I doubt EA tech support will improve much between now and then.)
And then there's the final bit: the suspicion that this is a preemptive move to shut the forums so they aren't an easy place to find criticism of BW's games.
I don't know if that's the case or not. It could just be a financial decision, after all. (Penny wise and pound foolish, imho, but whatever.) But they're not telling us it's a financial decision. They're telling us it's about devs communicating. The alternatives they list are inferior to the forums, for the most part. So if it's not really about finances, and the dev communication options are inferior, it makes me wonder if they just don't want to have criticism on their site.
Pity.
I feel like Bioware is literally dumping me because I am too fat.
Reddit isn't a viable substitute for anything.
That's kinda my point. I don't view it as being a viable alternative to this place, even in a hypothetical scenario where they were welcoming people from here with open arms.
Well BSN, we'll die as we lived: embroiled in heated arguments and ignored by the devs.
In March 2013, the Citadel DLC ended with a heartfelt message thanking the fans for their dedication and support.
In September 2015, the Trespasser DLC ended with a heartfelt message thanking the fans for their dedication and support.
In July 2016, the BSN delivered a short message, casually informing the fans that they've got a month for their dedication and support to clear out, they're demolishing the planet in order to build a new hyperspace bypass at the end of October...
The timing is the most bizarre thing. If they wanted to close the forums would it not have been more sensible to do it in a quiet period, in the middle of the dev cycle? Not 6 months from the release of the next instalment of arguably their most successful I.P. They seem to be derailing their own hype train.
8 months. They've never liked us anyway hence why they've never hired a community management team.
I keep wondering why there is the need for Bioware to lie about so much. Why the "this is because we care about the community" nonsense as justification for closing the forums? Why the lies about the ME3 ending prior to the game's release? I remember seeing an interview with Mike Laidlaw about DA:I. The interviewer asked whether the lighting in the CC was better this time because the stark difference between CC and actual lighting in game in the DAO and DA2 gave weird surprises once you had made a character. His response: "yeah, absolutely. We totally put a lot of attention to the lighting in the character creation this time around so you'll have a good idea of what your character will look like in the actual game." Then DA:I comes out and the CC lighting is GREEN.
Why? Just why? Is it a pathological thing? Is there a line in their contract that says "thou must not be honest about anything"? Maybe it's just something that becomes inevitable for big companies, but the contrast between what Bioware people say and the reality of things is so stark that it has become downright laughable.
8 months. They've never liked us anyway hence why they've never hired a community management team.
I keep wondering why there is the need for Bioware to lie about so much. Why the "this is because we care about the community" nonsense as justification for closing the forums? Why the lies about the ME3 ending prior to the game's release? I remember seeing an interview with Mike Laidlaw about DA:I. The interviewer asked whether the lighting in the CC was better this time because the stark difference between CC and actual lighting in game in the DAO and DA2 gave weird surprises once you had made a character. His response: "yeah, absolutely. We totally put a lot of attention to the lighting in the character creation this time around so you'll have a good idea of what your character will look like in the actual game." Then DA:I comes out and the CC lighting is GREEN.
Why? Just why? Is it a pathological thing? Is there a line in their contract that says "thou must not be honest about anything"? Maybe it's just something that becomes inevitable for big companies, but the contrast between what Bioware people say and the reality of things is so stark that it has become downright laughable.
That's PR speak for you. Everything is said to represent the corporate image. Stockholders must see that the corporation is doing well.
It's one of the things what's wrong in the corporate world today. Honesty is a liability.
That's PR speak for you. Everything is said to represent the corporate image. Stockholders must see that the corporation is doing well.
It's one of the things what's wrong in the corporate world today. Honesty is a liability.
And the conclusion from that is - the less well a corporation is doing, the more PR speak is required to cover it up.
...
I remember seeing an interview with Mike Laidlaw about DA:I. The interviewer asked whether the lighting in the CC was better this time because the stark difference between CC and actual lighting in game in the DAO and DA2 gave weird surprises once you had made a character. His response: "yeah, absolutely. We totally put a lot of attention to the lighting in the character creation this time around so you'll have a good idea of what your character will look like in the actual game." Then DA:I comes out and the CC lighting is GREEN.
...
Interesting. I was on the DAI beta patch test team and I had noticed there was something off with the lighting in the preview screens. There I posted a screenshot that showed that one side of the character was lit blue. It got fixed and is now using a neutral light source.
Still, it is not OK that when people asked for ages to get better lighting during character creation that nobody at BW actually checked it before release.
Interesting. I was on the DAI beta patch test team and I had noticed there was something off with the lighting in the preview screens. There I posted a screenshot that showed that one side of the character was lit blue. It got fixed and is now using a neutral light source.
Still, it is not OK that when people asked for ages to get better lighting during character creation that nobody at BW actually checked it before release.
There is still a stark difference between the Fade lighting in the character creation screen and the lighting in the rest of the game. It looks darker and more green to me. The lighting in the Black Emporium is different too.
Well. I guess this place is getting nuked.
Too bad.
Now, I'm not one of the people who's been here since the beginning. And I'm not one of the regulars, posting every day. (This will only be post 27, in fact.)
I started coming here for the legacy NWN stuff, then came again after Inquisition came out--mainly due to its bugs. (Because the EA support site is beyond worthless.) But I kept coming, even as the game got patched up, for the other bits. Some was just "how do I find item X for side quest 47?" And then there were all the other crazy discussions. Some were just plain silly, some were serious discussion of lore. Sometimes, it got a bit heated (pro-mage v pro-templar, pro-elf v not, etc.) But even at it's worst, I never saw much of the "toxic" aspect you heard about. Sure, a few people got a bit heated, but there generally wasn't the same degree of deep nastiness as you can find elsewhere. (I'm sure there must have been a couple nasty posts here and there, but they were buried under all the good stuff, and the casual visitor (me) didn't notice them too much.)
So now, the forums are being shut down. And we're supposed to go to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, or create our own communities on Reddit or Tumblr.
But the Facebook page mainly seems to be trying to sell me Mass Effect bikinis (or whatever piece of merch it is this week), which is not really what I'm looking for.
Twitter has that tiny character limit; what's the point? (It's good for links to things that are elsewhere, I guess.)
YouTube is good for videos, but not for discussion (and the video comments can get much more "toxic" than here). I'll watch your trailers there. But I would have been doing that anyway.
Instagram is photos, short videos. Not very interactive. Not much point.
Then there's Reddit and Tumblr. Reddit is hideous, and I find it hard to follow the threads; but at least it's a forum.
On Tumblr, it gets mixed in with everything else I follow. (Tumblr's sky-high dramallama quotient is another matter.)
None of these is a good replacement for this forum, especially not given how lore- and plot-heavy some of BW's games are. And none of these other places will build a community the same way as this place has.
And then there's the stated reason: it's hard for the devs to talk to us here, because they're off on those other sites.
But as a few dozen people have already mentioned, people talked to each other just fine, on these boards.
And frankly, I don't know how I'd talk to a dev on Facebook--ask questions about the next game in a comment when they post an ad for a licensed hoodie? I think not. Seems even harder on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. And don't get me started on "in-person" at events. The company is going to send devs to those events for promotion, not to get detailed feedback. (And I don't go to these events anyway, so there's that.)
And that gets to the fundamental issue. I don't think BW wants much feedback. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are fine for promotion of the products (games, bikinis, whatever). But they can't match forums for getting feedback--especially not the kind of in-depth feedback some of the folks on this forum are capable of.
Right now, the devs (who allegedly don't come to the forums much) could come here and see what their most dedicated fans are talking about. They could see the latest discussions about elves, mages, quarians, whatever. They could see what people think makes sense in the lore, versus what doesn't. They could use the forums as a way to shore up weak spots in the lore, or get ideas for new directions to take things in. And frankly, they could enjoy the fact that they helped create a world that spawned such animated discussions.
And on a more nuts-and-bolts level, this is a direct way for BW to see what bugs are in its games. These games are huge, any more--a billion moving parts, it feels like. Nobody likes bugs, but they're a reality. There will be bugs. Will it really be more efficient to have people tweet them? Does BW want to have someone read ten thousand "There's this bug..." tweets when Andromeda launches? (I doubt EA tech support will improve much between now and then.)
And then there's the final bit: the suspicion that this is a preemptive move to shut the forums so they aren't an easy place to find criticism of BW's games.
I don't know if that's the case or not. It could just be a financial decision, after all. (Penny wise and pound foolish, imho, but whatever.) But they're not telling us it's a financial decision. They're telling us it's about devs communicating. The alternatives they list are inferior to the forums, for the most part. So if it's not really about finances, and the dev communication options are inferior, it makes me wonder if they just don't want to have criticism on their site.
Pity.
Pretty much. If those are their ideas of places to get feedback, then they don't really want feedback. They just want pats on the back and brief gushing comments, or criticism so brief that no one can explain what the objection really is, which makes it pointless. A lot of the problems here could have been solved with permanent bans of people who overstep (threats to staff are definitely grounds for that.) The loss of any realistic forum for getting help with problems is what concerns me most, though. Games seem to have more and more bugs with less tech support all the time, and that doesn't begin to address where to get help if the quest itself stumps you...because there's NEVER been quest text that's poorly worded in any game... 
I admit, I'm starting to suspect that they're trying to fragment any critiques of ME:A's problems before it releases based on the timing. Closing the forums fragments communities and eliminates positive help with problems, but the criticisms will now be much more public and more people will see it. Why? Because people will be so frustrated at only having superficial forms of feedback that they'll spend a lot more time writing up and spreading their criticisms in forums BW doesn't control. And a lot of criticism that could be answered here, either by BW or someone else who can explain why something was done a particular way (and I've actually seen a lot of things headed off that way,) will balloon and spread and get exaggerated in the process. So, virtually no damage control, whether the criticism is grounded in fact or not...that's going to end well.
I feel like Bioware is literally dumping me because I am too fat.
That's how hurtful this is.
Well...there is a solution to that...
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