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Default Explain Bioware hate to me!

October 30th, 2015, 19:59
Hey. So I understand people who dislike new battle system in modern Bioware games, or that ME is almost a shooter. What I do not understand is all others.

People criticize everything and anything about Bioware. Characters, plots, etc. Where does this come from? I've never seen so much flaming against a gaming company.

To be precise, I'm speaking of youtube, various threads at other sites, and even their own forums. I don't post much, but while I was there, I noticed high amount of criticism. And all was well while I thought it was really just criticism, but when time passed I realized that it was not. People were pretty much blindly criticizing *anything* for the sake of flaming the company. And even though at first I joined them (I really hated absence of normal RTwP), I had to stop at that. Their attitude was too much.

I'm serious, I'd like to understand why. As someone who isn't very active in the gaming community, I feel like I missed something important. All this time I thought that irony towards Bioware comes from hardcore RPG fans, but it's obvious now that it isn't true. I'm puzzled. I don't want to ask over there, I already tried and got no clear replies and more flaming.

P.S. Maybe it's merely the fact that they've got big popular forums? And that people are people and will always be ranting?
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October 30th, 2015, 20:08
Bioware as an entity no longer exists. Its a title of an informal department used by EA to capture the original fanbase.

People that insist otherwise are either clueless or willingly blind.

Many fans still hope for a return to Biowares original roots but its not possible. In classic human behavior they expect something that can't be, therefore they will be perpetually hostile.
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October 30th, 2015, 20:15
To be honest, I don't think that all people I've seen berating Bioware in so many places are its ex-fans. We're talking of fans of games like BG, right? All these people can't be BG fans, they've probably never even played the BG games!

A lot also like to call them justice warriors, which I think has no connection to RPG's past or future. Maybe it's a separate group who hates equality in gaming in particular, or maybe they use Bioware's inclusive strategy as merely another excuse for flaming.

Ok, I probably shouldn't ask about it in a decent forum like this. You guys surely have rational reasons for disliking Bioware, but I've been wondering about others.
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October 30th, 2015, 20:57
I criticize the existence of Bioware Points, pay2win DLC, not crediting composers in games and betraying fans who got used to limited number of mobs by turning DA:I into endless mobrespawning grinder.

Other than that… Erm… Okay, Where is Kotor 3 and where is Jade Empire 2 already?
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October 30th, 2015, 22:27
Eh, from what I've seen there isn't THAT much lately…well, at least there are less death threats than usual.
Bioware has a reputation of catering to SJW "crowd", leaving them more open to personal attacks and usual mockery on youtube and the like. And I'll be damned if I haven't taken part in one of those.
"Bioware has sold it's soul to EA, Bioware is an empty shell" etc, etc…like everyone is turning into Skyrim npc's and repeating the same drivel.
It's all Bethesda's fault, as usual.
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October 30th, 2015, 23:37
I don't see it as hate but facts when people voice their displeasure with Bioware games now of days.
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October 31st, 2015, 00:12
I hated the Dialog Wheel in the first place. Not so much it in itself, but rather, that it gives the player onla kind of … abbreviations (cynically put) of what they actually say, when a certain one is chosen - and that this sometimes not showing what the player is intended to say at all ! - Partly - perhaps - due to translatiuon errors, I guess … (A meaning is not safely enough transported into the target language …)

SWTOR is right now a very different thing : 4.0 brough too many changes … I fear that it might be like NGE …
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October 31st, 2015, 00:20
Bioware has gone progressively downhill ever since BG. It's not so much hate for me as it is simply not giving a crap about their products anymore.
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October 31st, 2015, 00:46
To be fair there's been consistent problems with Bioware before they became part of EA.

To me it starts with BG2 with the Diablo-ization of the game that you saw more and more in their later titles.

But where Bio first starts to lose touch with reality is about the time when they brought in focus groups to decide on how to market games. Its about then they decided to focus on SP and pretty much abandoned the DM Client on NWN. Many people here may applaud the SP focus but it went to show how much vision they lost with NWN - especially regarding the DM Client. Any 5th grader could have told you how much the DM Client was used - that wasn't the point of the thing.

Some time after that when they started pushing agendas down our throat and they slowly became hostile to any opinion other than their own. For a brief time RPGWatch had a Bio rep on these boards involved in discussions and it turned out the company was starting to drink its own Kool-Aid, believing there were Bioware fans out there that bought every console if Bio made a game for it. Eventually it became company policy not to participate in third party websites, ala Blizzard et al., with the belief that other websites were making money off their games that rightfully belonged to them. In addition, other websites didn't simply tow the company line.

Which is what they started demanding of their new Social Forums. Users were getting accounts banned if they criticized problems whereas in the old forums the devs were more often than not pretty congenial. Eventually the Social Forums blew up and went out of control as far I understand. Its pretty understandable if you are being that heavy heavy handed and repressive.

That's what I think!
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October 31st, 2015, 00:47
Originally Posted by Drithius View Post
Bioware has gone progressively downhill ever since BG. It's not so much hate for me as it is simply not giving a crap about their products anymore.
Bioware has not gone downhill, it does exist.
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October 31st, 2015, 00:49
Part of it I suspect is the current bioware not delivering the experience that old bioware did for the "old fans", and good old "it's cool to hate what is popular" from a lot of other people. I personally don't mind current Bioware, though I don't think all they touch turn to gold. Mass effect was not deep, but I find it entertaining, and I liked most of the characters. Dragon Age: Origins was quite good (though due to the whole deep roads bit, I'll never replay it), but Dragon Age 2 was not very good. I've not played Dragon Age 3, but I'll probably pick it up when it hits ~10-15€.

And I still think that Neverwinter Nights is the worst game they've ever made. I would much rather play Dragon Age 2 than NWN.

Actually, thinking about on what they've made, Bioware have always been a bit spotty in terms of game quality. Shattered Steel was kinda bad, Baldur's Gate 1 was alright (suffered from terrible gameplay balance, though this was in part due to the ruleset used, playing a mage resulted in an inverted difficulty curve), Baldur's Gate 2 was really good (but still played second fiddle to the infinity engine games made by Black Isle), MDK 2 was quite good, NWN was absolutely terrible, KOTOR was good, Jade Empire was okay, Mass Effect was from a gameplay point of view shallow, but had good characters, Dragon Age was good but uneven, Mass Effect 2 was mostly good but again had shallow gameplay, Dragon Age 2 was bad, Mass Effect 3 was mostly good with some exceptions, but again shallow gameplay. Can't comment on DA 3 or Sonic Chronicles as I've not played them.
Last edited by Fnord; October 31st, 2015 at 01:00.
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October 31st, 2015, 00:59


Is this enough?
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October 31st, 2015, 01:04
RPGs then…
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October 31st, 2015, 01:28
What game is that?
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October 31st, 2015, 02:03
My last thoughts on this thread is, a few years ago a game called Dragons age was released.

It was a great game and I do believe everyone thought they were back. They EA stepped in and said "Wait a minute. We can make a lot of money if you just …."
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October 31st, 2015, 03:12
I no longer dislike Bioware. I wouldn't ever spend a penny on anything they or EA touched, let alone ever install Origin on my pc (because I actually like my pc). They are beneath my contempt.

I do, however, shower many idies with my money. THAT is my response to EA and Bioware.
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October 31st, 2015, 06:34
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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October 31st, 2015, 13:24
Originally Posted by Damian View Post
What game is that?
Daggerfall?
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October 31st, 2015, 14:30
Originally Posted by Damian View Post
What game is that?
As zahratustra said, it's Daggerfall. A game where most of the dialogue was very generic, basically any NPC would give you the same simple response to whatever you said, including quest important NPCs. If you triggered some quest-specific text, it would show up in a separate text box in the middle of the screen, and you would, if you were lucky, get the choice between saying yes or no. Morrowind improved a bit on this, but most of the dialogue was still very generic, and while you had a long list of dialogue options, it was more akin to browsing through the civelopedia in a Civ game than actual dialogue (and it was not very well written, for the most part).

Using PS:T as THE example of why old RPGs were so much better than new ones is really quite miss-representative. Quite often dialogue would be no deeper than this:

(Eye of the Beholder 2), though there were exceptions back then, much like there are exceptions these days. And it's the exceptions that we remember fondly.
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October 31st, 2015, 14:50
Originally Posted by Fnord View Post
Using PS:T as THE example of why old RPGs were so much better than new ones is really quite miss-representative.
Yeah, memories can't be relied upon. People keep forgetting that, when games were a scarce commodity, it was often a case of perseverance rather than enjoyment…
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