Explain Bioware hate to me!

I was using pt as a high point and not representative.

Reason #1: Bioware is hated. Hating on something/somebody that's hated makes you look cool and you'll feel more a part of the society.

Reason #2: They, like many other game companies from 20 years back, used to cater to a smarter audience. No miracle. Just getting games to run on PC back then wasn't easy so the audience really was smarter. Now we've got trivial-to-use consoles which let companies sell to the whole bell curve instead of just one skinny end of it so companies are catering to more average people. The skinny-enders are griping about it.

Reason #3: EA. They were bought by The Hated Ones and thus are hated. See point #1.

Reason #4: Dragon Age 2. I don't really know why but EA/Bioware followed up on their big hit with a cash grab, forcing this game to go through a too-short development cycle. To their credit, they still managed to ram out an OK game but it was nowhere near as good as DA1. People really hate it when the company disrespects a game they love. (See also: Star Wars Episode 1 - Buy My Toys)

wolfing said:

I don't hate Bioware, I just don't consider them a RPG company anymore, they make nice action games with lots of cutscenes.

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Come on Wolfing, you're way better than that. Is Witcher not an RPG because it has action combat? Would it become not an RPG if they were to add, say, half a dozen more cutscenes?

Damian said:

I was using pt as a high point and not representative.

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Wording in the picture (RPGs, plural) indicated that it tried to show PS:T as the norm back then, and DA 2 as the norm "today". And really, if you're not comparing either what the genre used to be, or what the company used to be, but rather comparing the high point (made by another company) with what a company created today, then the comparison means nothing at all, the only thing you've said is that DA 2 is not as good as the best game in this regard, which would be true for any other game as well.

But isnt that because they didnt even try to push the boundaries for the past 15 odd years?

Damian said:

But isnt that because they didnt even try to push the boundaries for the past 15 odd years?

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They've focused on different types of games than PS:T, so it would be very unfair to blame a company that is not trying to make PS:T for not making PS:T. Mass Effect tried to merge third person shooters with CRPGs and putting a heavy character focus on it, and in this regard it succeeded. Blaming Bioware for not making Mass Effect into something like PS:T would be like blaming Obsidian for not making Pillars of Eternity into Mass Effect.

Damian said:

But isnt that because they didnt even try to push the boundaries for the past 15 odd years?

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But they actually did.

Name me another nongrinding storydriven partybased shooter/RPG hybrid that's nearly as good as Mass Effect.

The sad point was TOR instead of Kotor3, then watered down DA2 and while DA3 went back on track it still had it's design crimes (horrible UI on PC, grinding, integrated MMO).
But you can't say they're not trying to "innovate".

I remember as a teen in the late 70s / early 80s enjoying bands like The Police and U2 that were popular from the start but in narrower circles, but as they gained mainstream success many fans started hating on them, saying they sold out and so on. I see the same thing here, as Zloth says.

Personally I like Bioware games, though my favorites of theirs are older titles like BG2 and NWN and KotOR, but I do enjoy Mass Effect pretty well and also Dragon Age 1 & 3. It is easy to say that many of their characters now are basically the same as back in the BG games, just prettier and with voice acting. I see that as an over-simplification, but get the basis of the argument.

It is easier to hate on Bioware now because we have so many great choices for RPGs arriving seemingly every month, and the result is we can refocus our frustration that as PC RPGs were struggling just over a decade ago as the big XBOX shift started, Bioware was all over that with XBOX timed-exclusive (Jade Empire) after XBOX timed-exclusive (KotOR).

It is similar to going to a Mac/Linux gaming forum (or even the Larian forums) and seeing opinions on D:OS EE ... which has been held back on Mac & Linux to focus efforts on consoles. There is much anger and angst about this ... which personally I do understand but at the same time would personally make that same decision 10 times out of 10. Because honestly, having the money to expand to other platforms for D:OS 2 depends on how the EE plays, and once the core game is done you need to focus on the where the most money will flow - and that is PC, XBOne and PS4. Macs might sell 15% of all computers now, but they don't account for 15% of all game sales ... if they did we'd be looking at a different story.

On a slightly related note, would Dragon Age: Origins be as well received today (if it had the graphics of a modern game made with a similar budget), now that we don't have a party-based CRPG with tactical combat drought as it was when it was released?
Heck, would Baldur's Gate have been as well received when it was released, if it had not been released during a time when CRPGs were considered a "dying genre"?

I think it would.

DA:O sure. BG1? I don't think so.

Zloth said:

Come on Wolfing, you're way better than that. Is Witcher not an RPG because it has action combat? Would it become not an RPG if they were to add, say, half a dozen more cutscenes?

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Well I explained what I think. To me the Mass Effects are nothing more than shooters with lots of cutscenes. Dragon Age: Origins was actually an RPG. DA2 meh, DA3 I haven't felt like trying it, waiting until it drops to the $5 range.

Dragon Age Origins was by far way better than the sequel, but I'd rather play any gold box game than anything Bioware ever made, That goes extra double for those Mass junk games ( first one was ok, 3rd one was awful beyond words).

If the current Dragon Age didn't need Origin I'd give it a try (say, when the price is like 5 bucks), but requiring Origin or Ubijunk just makes any game on those platforms laughable to me.

The only Bioware games I've played and enjoyed are Neverwinter Nights + expansions etc and Dragon Age Origins/Awakenings.

I remember trying Balder's gate once many moons ago and just not getting very far. I can't even remember why. I might give this another try at some point though. Balder's Gate 2, however, intensely triggered my party formation OCD by having my companions just wander off all the time, drove me nuts and this is the sole reason I quit the game soon after the Beholder cave and have never been tempted to try again. I don't deny it's a good game, I just can't personally bare that one singular mechanic.

I tried KOTOR and played for aaaages and nothing of interest had happened and the combat was waaaay to laughably easy to hold my interest, so I quit soon after sneaking past that Rancor that was unfathomably placed in some random hall. I also had no idea what was going on nor what my motivation was supposed to be, either because it wasn't there or what was there was too unbearably uninteresting to endure listening to.

I haven't tried Mass Effect yet to any great extent as I'm an FPS 'hater', so it seems logical to not bother trying.

Dragon Age 2 was such a joke of a game combined with being dull as dishwater that I only finished the last chapter out of morbid curiosity, literally clicking on any random dialogue without reading anything and skipping any skippable cutscene, just to see how asinine what plot I could follow turned out like. I was encouraged to see some hype for part 3 which seemed to rectify the problems of 2, but upon the game's release it just had most of the stuff I didn't like from Origins and barely any of what I did like combined with being a halfbreed MMO, and I'm not buying a game where only 25% of it appeals to me. I tried to watch a let's play of it instead on Youtube, just to get the story but I even had to quit that soon after that cripplingly bad singing set-up/scene followed by numerous dull strolls around stargazing towers in banal empty wildernesses.

Having said this, I even found the OC of NWN to be somewhat dull and dragged-out when it was first released, but at least it had a solid 'feel' to it, as in good mechanics, loot, environments etc. I was relieved to finish it. If I replay it now I can go quicker and treat it like a solid aRPG which isn't altogether too bad. Loved the expansions.

And I liked Dragon Age Origins but more in a guilty pleasure kind-of way, in that I could see it was a bit shit but still seemed to have fun playing. I'd say this was Bioware's best ever narrative for a full length game, it's just such a shame it came post-D&D and had the start of the more tarded gameplay mechanics that we all know and love today. Like NWN I enjoyed the expansion a lot more.

So I've always been kind of 'meh' to Bioware and remain to this day still kind of 'meh' to Bioware, and, as more of an outside observer to Bioware fandom, I can say it's quite amusing seeing how the mirror has reversed in the last 10-15 years, from Bioware fans being the dominant RPG force that mocks 'crappy' RPGs like Icewind Dale (really, most of the BG 2 fans wouldn't even look at IWD as soon as they heard it had no companions, but now love to include it as an example of the good ol' IE days, because it helps their argument) to being the mock-fodder of all mock-fodders, lower even that modern equivalents of IWD.

I'm not amused in a spiteful, vengeful way, just in a "ain't life weird" kind-of way.

As for answering why Bioware has become the mock-fodder, wow, that would take quite some walls of text!

lackblogger said:

I remember trying Balder's gate once many moons ago and just not getting very far. I can't even remember why. I might give this another try at some point though. Balder's Gate 2...

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I don't think the time of release had much to do with the way people perceive Baldur's Gate. It's a legit classic imo.

Moriendor said:

codex meme

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If it didn't trigger you I wouldn't do it

JDR13 said:

I don't think the time of release had much to do with the way people perceive Baldur's Gate. It's a legit classic imo.

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As someone who did not play BG at launch, I've actually had a hard time seeing what makes it stand out so much. I had no such issues with Ultima 7, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder and so on, but BG has a few issues (like the above mentioned inverted difficulty curve if you played a wizard, and neither the writing nor the encounter design was great) that just makes it, well, not stand out to me. I don't think it's "bad", but the games that came out right after it shook some life into the genre once more were just better.

txa1265 said:

I remember as a teen in the late 70s / early 80s enjoying bands like The Police and U2 that were popular from the start but in narrower circles, but as they gained mainstream success many fans started hating on them, saying they sold out and so on. I see the same thing here, as Zloth says.

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Good point. Hate is beginning to occur when something that's thought to be just "cool" and *not* being mainstream just becomes popular and does become mainstream ?

Reminds me of Genesis. Most of the fans who like their "progressive age" don't like their pop songs and vice versa.
But in fact nothing has changed about Genesis. Only their way of making music has changed. Well, yes, and some members weren't on board anymore when Genesis became mainstream.

"Becoming mainstream" is to some sorts of fans = treason.


Besides, right now I experience how much SWTOR got changed for "Knights of the fallen Empire" (KOTFE). Patch 4.0.
They basically changed the MMO into an online RPG. They streamlined so much it is hard for me to stomach - and most older players have similar problems - because they are so much used to the older game.
The changes to SWTOR are as radical as MS Office 2013 was to earlier Office versions when Microsoft began including these "Ribbons".
For people who just loved the micromanagement in SWTOR, there i no place for them anymore. Bioware changed the whole game into an - these are my words - "online story RPG".
Some people even say it's becoming to look like ME2.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

For people who just loved the micromanagement in SWTOR, there i no place for them anymore. Bioware changed the whole game into an - these are my words - "online story RPG".
Some people even say it's becoming to look like ME2.

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TOR is MMO.
ME2 is not MMO, and will never be MMO. And noone wants ME2... 2.
Sonar system there was horrible, just like it's light version in DA:I.

Fnord said:

As someone who did not play BG at launch, I've actually had a hard time seeing what makes it stand out so much. I had no such issues with Ultima 7, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder and so on, but BG has a few issues (like the above mentioned inverted difficulty curve if you played a wizard, and neither the writing nor the encounter design was great) that just makes it, well, not stand out to me. I don't think it's "bad", but the games that came out right after it shook some life into the genre once more were just better.

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I think most of us have at least one particular game where we just don't see what others do. For instance, I've never got what makes KotOR so good for most people. I played it and finished it, but I don't get why so many others consider it a great game.

As far as the other games you mention, I've played them all, and with the exception of U7, I wouldn't put them on the same level as BG. Especially when it comes to how they've aged and how playable they are by today's standards.