Poll: Anti-BioWare backlash?

[ecoho]

Um, what does this have to do with what you quoted?

Surely you're capable of remembering a post you made like, 20 minutes ago?

You want to apply urban dictionary's definition of "selling out" to Bioware.

How have they abandoned their roots, exactly?

By taking the "mainstream" path over the wishes of their fans.

Most people didn't like the changes from ME1 to ME2. Likewise, most people didn't like the changes from DAO to DA2. Most people would have preferred a KOTOR 3 instead of another MMO.

Selling out means abandoning the fans that made you successful.

Ok i know im steping on a land mine of rage and hate, but what the hell. You wat to talk majority? the majority of the Mass effects player base is on the console. Im not touching dragon age with a ten foot pole. As for KOTOR it would not have sold well after the second one,yes it would have had moderate success on the PC but they would lose the console crowd (which once again is the majority in gameing.)

now please stop with your blind hate and rage and read what your typing because at the momoent your coming off as a self intitled little kid.

 

[lapan]

Prior to TOR's release, BioWare was considered one of the best developers out there. Highly respected for the stories they put in their games, and the relative accessibility of the gameplay in said games.

Then came Dragon Age 2 and now TOR. And even though the latter game is successful (which is debatable, I know, but every objective critic and casual fan give TOR high praises) the former had near universal disappointment.

But the backlash I'm seeing today for the developer seems because of TOR. Even with DA2 not meeting expectations, people still held BioWare in high regard. Now it seems people are just hating them for the sake of hating them. As if human nature dictates that you must hate anything that's hyped up or uber successful regardless of if you've even tried the new product or how you once may have felt.

So, I'm just curious. Has your opinion of BioWare changed?

Yes. Bad handling of any sort of critique, bans for stupid reasons and constantly lowering game quality in each game made me lose my respect for bioware.

And their desicion to release ME3 on Origin only + the dissapointing leaked story scared me away from buying ME3.

 

[mrF00bar]

The only BioWare games I have played are Mass Effect 1 & 2, and Dragon Age: Origins (played the demo for DA2, and I didn't think it was bad). But with Mass Effect 3s upcoming release (which I am so eagerly awaiting), my opinion of BioWare is going down. 'Mass Effect 3 is better with Kinect!' 'Mass Effect 3 has three modes of play!' 'Mass Effect 3 is a great place for new players to jump into the series!' 'Multiplayer!', all of that just pisses me off so much.

Those things would annoying me but now I just don't care about them because of Origin. I refuse to install it onto my PC and am therefore also not going to be able to play ME3. Other than that I still hold Bioware in high regard but after EA took them over I have just been waiting to see them get run into the ground and it brings a tear to my eye knowing EA will do it someday.

Why not just uninstall Origin after your finished with ME3? Or is it uninstallable?

That would make sense but Origin collects information from your PC and sends it back to EA, it is basically spyware. Would you willing install something that could note down all the information about your PC system and I believe it even monitors what websites you visit? That could just be me not paying enough attention though.

 

[demotion1]

I don't get it. I simply just don't get it. Dragon Age 2 was a perfectly good game, if containing some questionable design choices. Mass Effect 3 looks to be a barrel of fun and every major 'complaint' I see seems more like pathetic nitpicking to me.

At the end of the day, Bioware are only a studio making videogames. It's not that big a deal. It isn't worth getting this worked up over.

I'm with you here. I accept that people can have complaints, sometimes it really seems like laughable nitpicking.

Hating them because of EA does have some merrit in my book, DAO2 was a good game but compared with the rest of their catalog makes it seem worse than it is. Only 2 problems for me were enemies teleporting in the battle and repeatable dungeons - both were there because of time limitations. It actually seems like they learned something from their mistakes here and i have high hopes that they will redeem themselves with DAO3.

Both Mass Effects were awesome games, and although i liked Mass Effect better as an RPG, Mass Effect 2 was a better game imo and it is much more replayable than 1 - i've played it at least 3 times without getting bored, while i got really bored the second time i played Mass Effect. Also, about the DLC, they are roughly the same at release as with Mass Effect 2 - it also had lots of trivial dlc that does not matter. Let me remind you that Mass Effect 2's DLC was mostly high quality DLC. It is the same team and so far it looks like they will deliver.

TOR is an amazing game in my opinion and they have done an amazing job releasing such a good MMO. I know i will be giving them my money there for the foreseeable future.

So, for me they have a positive balance in their latest releases.

 

[Imbechile]

I would stop hating Bioware if they dropped all pretense of making an RPG and said they are making an action game. Then my thoughts would be like this:

They went for a different audience, end of.

I dont hate them for it; I just no longer belong to their target audience and as a result dont buy their games.

But their fans would go apeshit. It doesn't matter that their games are shallow and near devoid of any RPG elements, as long as they label their games RPGs their fans will buy it, no matter what they release, and also, as long as they label their games RPGs, I will have nothing but contempt for them.

 

[Dandark]

I liked Mass effect 2 well enough, there were many things I liked better in the first game but it was still pretty good.
Dragon age 2 is tricky.....On one hand it was a dissapointment and not as good as I would have hoped a DA sequel to be, yet it was still an enjoyable enough game.

The story is so terrible that I have never been able to finish the game more than once and I have about 11 different characters but I do that a lot on most games as well. Im worried about Bioware but haven't completely lost faith in them yet.
Hopefully DA3 will be a great improvement.

Also I haven't really been hyped for ME3 at all but it's looking pretty decent, I hear you can now actully use melee weapons which sounds cool since I always wanted a better melee feature than press B to slap the air in front of you and maybe kill a fly.

 

[Knight Templar]

They have made mistakes, that is impossible to deny, some mistakes are big, most are not.
But they still create enjoyable games (haven't played TOR, don't intend to) and their screw-ups are not company shattering.

The hate for them is quite out of proportion with what they have done, it's a bit strange to see such hate (some of which can only be described as obsessive and malicious). Maybe this is because they were held in such high regard before?

They have a terrible PR department too.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I don't understand the love DA:O's combat system gets: its fucking slow and frustrating. It's levelling system pretty par for the course, but the talent trees and layout was God-awful mess. I have tried to play this game eight times and every time the stupid combat system and retarded companion AI has ruined it.

Now, Dragon Age II, despite have a less epic story and a game area that was criminally small managed to fix up the one thing I hated about DA:O. The combat, instead of a meandering and dull system, I get a free flow hack and slash system that allows me to pick either pick my targets or bullrush a group and see how I go. Had that been the only change, I'd consider it enough.

It is a shame that the art style the used for Origins was jettisoned in favour of the one they used in DAII, and the lack of races/backstory combintion was disappointing but I found myself enamoured with Hawke's companions, Varric 'Super-Best Bro' Varric especially.

As for ME2, I fail to see how tightening up the gun-play from 'frustrating' to 'fun' is a bad idea?

 

[Steampunk Viking]

These Anti-Bioware rants is hilarious. I will say I caused a small earthquake at my yell of "NOOOOOOOO" when I heard EA bought them out, but they're still a great company who make solid storylines and great gameplay. Plus it's given me the excuse of "if it's a shit element, I blame EA", therefore I've made my own excuse for saying Bioware are amazing, hah! They are still my favourite games developer.

But if I may address a few of the reasons for complaints that have propped up...

First off, Bioware "selling out". My first point will be EA, who as I've always said is owned by Satan himself, but let's ignore that for a moment. Bioware are enjoying their biggest successes of their career right now, they're bound to be a touch more extravagent, what with the most anticipated epic series in years (Mass Effect) and the best selling MMO of all time (The Old Republic), they're going to see an oppurtunity here, and let's be fair, apart from the travesty that was making us pay for ME2 DLC when they said it'd be free, they haven't really done anything to screw us over. The figurine situation and the ME3 new modes are perfect examples. People are complaining about the multiplayer and the 3 single player modes when Bioware are just reaching out to a new audience - news flash, you can play Mass Effect 3 on RPG mode and not play multiplayer and without Kinect for exactly the same experience you expected! As for the figurines, it's a nice treat to give you DLC for multiplayer when buying a figurine and it's not essential at all... what makes this funnier is this sort of quote:

"Right, this has put me off Mass Effect 3, not buying it now. How dare they put free DLC on optional figurines for the multiplayer section, which I hate already and am never going to play anyways!"

Mass Effect is huge now. Star Wars had figurines as well, I don't hear you all ***** about that.

Secondly, Dragon Age 2 causing people to hate the company. Companies mess up, but Bioware, unlike most companies listen to their fans, and sometimes the fans get it wrong. Regardless they're always trying to improve and give the player base a better experience... and you hate them for this? That's just dumb. They've already said they're going to remove alot of crap from DA2 in DA3, just leave it, they've heard you already. Geeze, it's like you're a girl Bioware fancies, they try and woo you and do everything to please you, and you snub them for a developer who doesn't give two shits about what you want, like Infinity Ward. "Here's Modern Warfare 3, it's exactly the same as the last two, all for just £50!" "Woo! I'm buying that!"

Ok rant over.

 

[lapan]

Bioware are enjoying their biggest successes of their career right now, they're bound to be a touch more extravagent, what with the most anticipated epic series in years (Mass Effect) and the best selling MMO of all time (The Old Republic), they're going to see an oppurtunity here, and let's be fair, apart from the travesty that was making us pay for ME2 DLC when they said it'd be free, they haven't really done anything to screw us over.

Which as i heard is suffering from some severe bugs and Bioware/EAs responses rank from simply ignoring even the most constructive negative critique as trolling, banning the affected parties or even removing the button to cancel subscriptions and deleting+sending out warnings to people who post the direct link to it.

Meanwhile the leaked story of ME3 lets me fear the moment the game actually comes out as they took some very questionable decicions with simply retconning and ignoring the players choices at several points.

 

[Slash Dementia]

I think I'll decide when I play Mass Effect 3. The changes seem big right now, but actually getting to play it might change my opinion. I'm not one for being all crazy and saying that I hate them because they added a few new features or changed a bit. It's the direction they chose, and it still looks like a fun game that I'll enjoy. I just have to aim my expectaions lower so that I won't be disappointed.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Bioware used to be one of those companies that could do no wrong. But not with EA in the picture they have started to do a few things that I just know they are better than that.

I'm a bit scared to say the least, without Bioware all I have left is Valve and those people are pissing me off because of Episode 3. Even in Valve time its getting ridiculous and the longer it takes the less impressed I'm going to be with it.

 

[Uriain]

You take away the MMO component and TOR is what DA2 should have been...

And obviously where all the DA:O employees went. Meanwhile they got some hack and slash mobile gaming crew to do DA2 and kill the IP.

Its comments like this (and similarly F*** EA comments) which do nothing, not only for the discussion, but also to lend to taking a person seriously.

You don't like EA, that's fine. Lots of people don't like EA for various reasons. You don't like DAII, totally fine, no one says you have to blindly love a game because it comes from a developer (any developer).

Throwing out comments like the one quoted, should be altered to be personalized as you don't speak for everyone. No one is saying that Bioware is perfect and each of their games is a crystalline masterpiece which should be set upon a throne of gold. They have make mistakes, and poor choices, (in all of their games) just like any other developer.

 

[Steampunk Viking]

Bioware are enjoying their biggest successes of their career right now, they're bound to be a touch more extravagent, what with the most anticipated epic series in years (Mass Effect) and the best selling MMO of all time (The Old Republic), they're going to see an oppurtunity here, and let's be fair, apart from the travesty that was making us pay for ME2 DLC when they said it'd be free, they haven't really done anything to screw us over.

Which as i heard is suffering from some severe bugs and Bioware/EAs responses rank from simply ignoring even the most constructive negative critique as trolling, banning the affected parties or even removing the button to cancel subscriptions and deleting+sending out warnings to people who post the direct link to it.

Meanwhile the leaked story of ME3 lets me fear the moment the game actually comes out as they took some very questionable decicions with simply retconning and ignoring the players choices at several points.

ToR is still a little buggy but they're ironing them out bit by bit. I find it highly enjoyable, and it's not as if WoW was bug free to begin with. In fact, lots of popular games are a bit glitchy to begin with like, say, Skyrim? The subscription button thing is a little concerning, but I can't really comment.

As for the Mass Effect 3 leaks, not read them, don't want to read them, I don't know why anyone buying the game would want to read them. Why spoil the bloody game? Regardless, two things pop to mind. First off, Bioware said they wanted to tweak it according to peoples reactions, so it may turn out different to that and secondly, what's to say it's not an early draft or even fake. I know companies have been known to do that to gauge reactions and the like...

We won't know until we see for ourselves though.

 

[lapan]

As for the Mass Effect 3 leaks, not read them, don't want to read them, I don't know why anyone buying the game would want to read them. Why spoil the bloody game? Regardless, two things pop to mind. First off, Bioware said they wanted to tweak it according to peoples reactions, so it may turn out different to that and secondly, what's to say it's not an early draft or even fake. I know companies have been known to do that to gauge reactions and the like...

We won't know until we see for ourselves though.

There has been a statement from Bioware as far as i know, so it's at least not fake. We can only hope that they improve upon it till the release date.

 

[Steampunk Viking]

There has been a statement from Bioware as far as i know, so it's at least not fake.

There's been a statement!? Well that is conclusive... despite everyone calling them underhanded, money grabbing, mainstream catering sellouts, there's no way they'd lie!

 

[Yopaz]

BioWare has created the kind of games I don't really care about. I hear good things about Mass Effect, but I find those games quite boring. Yeah, this is my opinion and I am sure they're great games, but they're not for me. Thus BioWare can do whatever they want and I wont change my view on them as I've never had any personal opinion on them.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Anyone who wasn't concerned when EA took over Bioware isn't a student of history. Having watching EA run Origin into the ground, it was hard not to feel jittery when they acquired yet another beloved RPG maker.

Pretty much that. Most of my issues are with EA, not Bioware, but since EA now owns Bioware the difference is negligible. It does concern me that Bioware seems to have jumped on the Gears of War bandwagon, but again I wonder how much of that is EA's influence.

 

[lapan]

There has been a statement from Bioware as far as i know, so it's at least not fake.

There's been a statement!? Well that is conclusive... despite everyone calling them underhanded, money grabbing, mainstream catering sellouts, there's no way they'd lie!

Can't access it from here at the moment sicne the escapist is loading extremely slow, but this should be the one:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.323578-Mass-Effect-3-Story-Leaked-BioWare-Accepting-Feedback