Mass Effect - New PC Patch Coming
 

Voodoo Extreme posts a newsbit about a new patch in development for the PC version of Bioware's Mass Effect, quoting Chris Priestly in this post over at the Bioware forums:
More information.

A patch = great.

Not having the kind of DLC they promised = not great.

The expectation of being able to buy more "chapters" that bridged ME1 and 2 was one reason I bought it in the first place. And so far, there's only Bring Down the Sky.

So it's not the living, serialized game I had hoped for.

Its about time. Overheating bug is a tad annoying..

The DLC was simply not worth the effort. Too much work for too little. Their resources are better spent on big projects than small addons. One dev explained it quite good last year when asked about it.

Great - nothing like truth in advertising. Next time I'll know to treat that as bull and not base a game purchase on it.

I just finished Mass Effect on the PC yesterday.
For me it was one of the most pleasing game experiences ever.
Looking forward to ME2.

If they were not idiots, this would be the patch that'd remove the DRM. But I'm probably overestimating their intelligence.

You need to take that up with EA, not BioWare. We have no say in it.

Beyond agreeing to be part of EA?

Ancient history - and not something that the people who actually *do* the work have any control over … or benefit from. They just take crap on message boards ;)

If Bioware had no control over the EA deal, I'll be very surprised.

Note that the poster claimed Bioware had no say, and I didn't bring up any specific poor worker slave with no choice of where and how he performs his work.

Anyway, I enjoy giving crap to developers who used to represent great art but then succumbed to the mass market.

:)

Playing ME PC on my 3.3 GHz Core 2 Duo with a nVidia GTX260 is nigh impossible. The driver issues with nVidia displays are significant and large. Many people can't even play the game here guys. DLC is not the issue when your game is outright defective.

I understand that many people can play and enjoyed ME for the PC. It stutters so much on my system I can't even really play it. If I want to play ME - I'm stuck playing it on my 360 (which sounds like a leafblower under my TV when it is on from the twin 70 cooling fans, but that's another thread).

Hopefully, the patch makes the game playable on my hardware.

The game is not defective.

I run ME at 1280x960 (highest available resolution) with all options on maximum, and it runs just fine on my 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo and nVidia 8800GTS 512. It sounds like maybe you're a having a software/hardware conflict somewhere.

Check your history, friend. BioWare was sold by Elevation Partners to EA. BW didn't sell; we were sold.

The drawback of accepting money from private investors is that sometimes they want their money back before you've had a chance to earn it back. When that happens, they sell you to get their lucre. If they can't sell you, they close you and sell off your physical and intellectual assets to get their lucre.

Welcome to the cold equations of the game industry…

I agree with JDR13. You've got something else wrong. That's pretty much my system and it plays like a dream, even at very high resolutions. Maybe you should pad your RAM? It's relatively inexpensive.

Try the omega drivers. With them my FPS rised from 5-20 to 40-50. The game run totally smooth. My pc at the time was 2,7 Ghz core2duo and old 8800GTS640.

Stormwaltz,

unfortunately the observation in your deleted post is correct, even though the quoted post was meant in a different way and didn't come from somebody known for flaming.

Generally many forum visitors are not able to distinguish between a company and the people who work there.

Of course I can only speak for myself, but I have noticed that Patrick didn't post here for quite some time.

I just wanted to echo Gorath's post - and, yes, I've noticed Patrick no longer posts here.

I don't know a solution. Our experience is that excessive moderation can kill a board. We don't want all-out warfare but we do want strident debate and walking that line without offending anyone is impossible.

I think that the solution is to remind people of this fact - some here have claimed to want more developer support - but that doesn't come from calling devs who come here voluntarily 'idiots'.

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs."

If DLC reaches the level Penny is asking for it could become interesting, but there really isn't anything suggesting that will ever be the case (IMO). If anything, they are a step back from the days of expansions as they generally offer less content. Still, this game will be a trilogy that will probably offer a lot by the time they are through. Patches, on the other hand, have been part of the beast for a long while, and Bioware's quality and support has been substantial.