Mass Effect: Andromeda - Survey on Series Future

@GameRant EA has sent out a survey to players of Mass Effect: Andromeda asking about its problems and would like to know their thoughts on the series future.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released on PC and consoles at the end of March, the sci-fi RPG didn't quite hit the mark. Rumors about its turbulent development seemed to suggest that a lack of direction about what the game would be, how it would play, and the technology used to make it contributed to making a game that was panned by fans and critics.

But it seems that the companies behind the game are looking to improve things in future. Mass Effect: Andromeda publisher EA has now sent out a survey to players to get their feedback on the game and what may have gone wrong. The survey asks how likely the player is to recommend the game to a friend (on a scale of 1 to 10) and gives them 400 characters to explain the reason for choosing that number.
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More information.

According social media posts, fans have responded to the survey complaining about the game feeling “phoned in,” in addition to it having an open-world that doesn’t feel enjoyable to explore and spend time in. And, of course, participants in the survey make mention of the title’s poor facial animations.

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Although I hit 100+ hours with ME4, I didn't receive any such survey.
We sure it wasn't sent only to those who still play it's MMO part? Or the reason is I don't use hating platforms aka social networks?

Because they already know what you think about their games

Hardly.
They definetly know what I think about Sims 4. I made over 5000 posts on it's official forum:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/profile/JoxerTM22

But other games… Nah. No trace of my opinion(s) any more.

Didn't get one either. I wrote my opinion in the review though: Instead of scrapping it, fix it. The potential is there.

Whole thing is kind of amusing. They shut down their own forum, "We we can now stay in touch through Youtube and Reddit!...only it turns out, it's way, way worse there than on ol' BSN.
So now they are sending surveys to get more rational player feedback.
For this...more consistent writing and putting more effort into developing setting, lore, worldbuilding and exploration.
They can still turns this around...one expansion ( something with intention of rivaling Blood&Wine on size and quality) focused on this, would leave a more positive, lasting impression on the community.
And ditch the whole race/gender "agenda" out of your games...nothing good comes out of it.

"And ditch the whole race/gender "agenda" out of your games…nothing good comes out of it."

What? It's a game that literally deals with races... even alien races, and who's to say aliens have the same ideas about sex that we do? It would simply be weird if there was no topics about race, sex, etc.

I actually liked ME:A, just bring back the original combat system (so I can pause and issue commands to my teammates) and it'd be peachy.

EA has sent out a survey to players of Mass Effect: Andromeda asking about its problems and would like to know their thoughts on the series future.

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Just shows how clueless the big studios are.

In their endless quest for profits they distanced themselves from gamers and got utterly lost. Pathetic when they can't even differentiate good from bad anymore and require step-by-step instructions from the fans. Time to scrap the franchise.

BoboTheMighty said:

Whole thing is kind of amusing. They shut down their own forum, "We we can now stay in touch through Youtube and Reddit!…only it turns out, it's way, way worse there than on ol' BSN.
So now they are sending surveys to get more rational player feedback.

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i agree this is funny as hell. Big studios have closed their fan forums and now totally out of touch of their playerbase. Forums used to be a place where devs and gamers can interact easily. Then everyone jumped in the social media bandwagon…

joxer said:

They definetly know what I think about Sims 4. I made over 5000 posts on it's official forum:

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Holeeeeee sheeeeeet!

Those who respond with a 9 or a 10 will get free in-game advertising for a year.

Because your voice matters to us.

No survey either. Imagine. You'd think they'd care about customers they've had for 20 years. Incompetent boobs.

"Only asked for score 1-10 for recommending game to a friend and then a text box for why. Then 5 MP related questions about pricing models and such."

Dez said:

i agree this is funny as hell. Big studios have closed their fan forums and now totally out of touch of their playerbase. Forums used to be a place where devs and gamers can interact easily. Then everyone jumped in the social media bandwagon…

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MEA has official forums…

Also, BioWare have active devs on Reddit, the unofficial BSN (which is pretty much the old BSN, only moderated by fans) and Neogaf from what I saw (in BioWare game related threads), it's not all Facebook and Twitter.

azarhal said:

MEA has official forums…

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Nice find. Based on the number of posts, based on forum moderator/developer information about patches in Game Updates section… it's "deader than dead meat".

azarhal said:

it's not all Facebook and Twitter.

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But it is.

Because of early negativity I decided to wait til it hit a sale to check it out. When they released the 10 hour demo to everyone I gave it a try, but it kept crashing. My backlog is too large to get worked up over it so I moved on. Maybe someday.

Ovenall said:

"And ditch the whole race/gender "agenda" out of your games…nothing good comes out of it."

What? It's a game that literally deals with races… even alien races, and who's to say aliens have the same ideas about sex that we do? It would simply be weird if there was no topics about race, sex, etc.

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I'm talking more about writing ( and design) intended to appease audience than putting it's own creative vision ahead.



Few "SJW" lines out of context do no matter, but it's a symptom of a mindset I detest in ( many) modern artists. Same thing with this survey.

Probably why old Russian writers are my favorites…most of them were sociopaths who didn't give a fuck about anything.

Coincidentally, I completed this game last night (108hrs, single player only) and wrapped up the prequel novel (Nexus Uprising), so it's too bad I didn't receive a survey. While it's my least favorite ME game, there's a lot to like about Andromeda.

In a nutshell, I thought the campanions were done quite well, and I could see becoming attached to a few if the series somehow continued. While not quite to ME 1-3 quality, I'd still put them above any in the 'modern' BioWare era, such as Dragon Age.

The overall story about populating a new galaxy to avoid the Reapers was a good idea, and I have no problem with the uprising on the Tempest justifying the random exile encounters on the worlds you explore. But it went off the rails with space tendrils, leveling and loot was terrible, the planets were too 'busy', and we spent waaaay too much time exploring Remnant stuff. If any ME gets made from this point forward, I hope they reconsider the ancient alien ruin subplots, because the Protheans and Remnants have been my least favorite aspects of the series (just slightly more than Cerberus). In addition, the Tempest was nowhere near as awesome as the Normandy(s), but admittedly the Nomad was more fun than the Mako.

Despite all the criticism BioWare has gotten over ME:A, what they gave us was still better than any prequel they could have come up with. From the bottom of my heart, I hate prequels. They are lazy. They guarantee nothing you do will change history. The fan survey BW did early in production showed they at least listen, even if they present with 1 step forward and 2 steps back. So for that, I thank them, and I'm pleased they are finally reaching out again for input. It gives me hope that we'll see more of this amazing universe they've created.

As a side note regarding the article linked, it's disheartening to learn how popular the thug-simulator, Grand Theft Auto franchise, continues to be. When the wonder of exploring, being the hero and making people's lives better is dwarfed by killing cops, pimpin' hoes and stealing shit, I think it summarizes where we're at as a species. Maybe a one way trip to Mars isn't so bad.

BTW, you do realize they don't actually read the vast majority of the surveys? They use an algorithm to mine the most common words or phrases, so at the end of the survey period, they'll get a list with something like:

Most common survey themes:
1) EA sucks ballz (2.3 million uses)
2) Electronic Arts destroyed BioWare (2.1 million uses)

(skip entries 3-254 referring to EA…….)

255) Animations were poor (459k uses)
256) Loot was boring (454k uses)

…and so on.