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Since this is being dug up, since this I've played it, and I thought it was a really good game. Sure the animation wasn't top notch, but seeing as people loved Minecraft I don't understand why they give two shits about it here. It was a bit buggy, but besides that I see no issues with it and found it to be on par with the original trilogy.

Expectation setting is the issue. You expect talking blockheads from Minecraft, so it's acceptable. Animations that are objectively worse than from 2007's Mass Effect are neither expected nor acceptable for Mass Effect 4, a game that sells itself as being AAA. Read the article if you have some time, it gives the insider perspective on how the animations (and overall content) became what it became. Again, that doesn't mean that you or other people won't enjoy the be able to enjoy the game that was shipped, just that it had genuine flaws which the dev team knew about but management chose to ignore.

Again, I don't see an issue with the content, and don't give a shit about animation. I don't think that should be anyone's reason for getting a game.

It's kind of like going for a summer blockbuster movie that was worse than its first part. You don't expect Avengers IV to have worse production and direction than Avengers 1. Doesn't mean the new movie isn't enjoyable, just that it's a letdown. To be fair, there is a section of the gaming community that just expects excellent animation to its storytelling, and this game would have been a letdown for them. There's a larger part of the community that just asks the game not be broken/busted/buggy, and this game unfortunately was not fair to them either, despite a full-fat AAA price. Given that, the fact that they're prioritizing adding gay romances over other content to improve the game seems strange to me.

I go to a movie for production and direction. That's something that's important. If a movie doesn't have that, it's shit. Games can be great with below-average animation, such as again Minecraft.I'm not entirely sure what your issue is with adding gay romances, seeing as they added straight ones and ones with aliens as well, so it seems stupid that you specify you don't want gay relationships, which I think was an improvement in the game, because it opens up an important part of the game to a huge proportion of the population. The game had a shit done of content, and honestly bugs were an issue for me twice, maybe? I found more in Fallout 4. 

Again, games can be great is a generalization. You can have as much or more fun playing Monopoly compared to playing GTA V, but that doesn't mean you hold GTA V to the same standards you hold Monopoly. In the specific case of ME:A, the game was underwhelming despite coming from the house of Bioware.

My issue is not with adding gay relationships per se, but with adding gay relationships over other priorities. I'd compare ME:A to a sea-worthy but underperforming luxury yacht. Instead of fixing the engine and ironing out other visible bugs, they decided it somehow made sense to add seats that were appreciated by a limited audience, but few people outside the audience, instead of working on something with larger applicability and relevance. As there is still story DLC on the way, perhaps they still have time to make repairs before the 'complete' version is ready, and I hope for everyone's sake they make use of that time well. However, the studio pulling the plug on the game's sequel seems to make this possibility unlikely.

FO4, and Bethesda open worlds in general are a bad benchmark to compare bugs against, as there those are the expectation instead of the error, and given the size of those worlds and how ancient (and arguably unprepared) their game engines are, I'd argue that the core audience for that product knew what they were getting into. FO4 had bugs, but in a comparable proportion to FO3. ME:A bugs and errors were significantly higher than ME3 or its predecessors on release.

Again, I didn't see much bugs in my play through and I didn't notice anymore bugs than the original three, and I don't care for animation. It seems strange that you find issue with gay relationships over other priorities, rather than just relationships over other priorities, but whatever. You've still yet to say what you didn't enjoy about the game beyond that.

The only relationships added were gay relationships, ergo when I'm saying I have an issue with gay relationships being prioritized, it goes without saying that includes any kind of relationships. If they'd added straight relationships, I'd have raised the same point, though those would arguably have had more market appeal.

The game itself was over priced and underwhelming compared to the house of Bioware. For large companies, the challenge is maintaining quality (arguably something that Bethesda failed with FO4s cut down narrative choices vis-a-vis FO:NV or FO3), and I hold them responsible when they slip.

I've read the article, and unless I missed something, it doesn't say anything about adding gay relationships specifically, so if you could point out where you're getting that from, I'd be grateful.

Again, you're not mentioning anything specific. I don't think Andromeda was much more expensive than 3 was on release, and surely as a game developer you can appreciate how useless "underwhelming" is as a response when you don't mention any issues. 

Here's the link to the article on the patch, and I'll be leaving the conversation here.

Seeing as there's many more things about the patch that don't expand on the experience much at all such as new hairstyles, I again see no issue with why expanding what I can do as a player is the top concern you had there.

You've still failed to provide many real issues with the game, and seeing as you choose to end the conversation there I'm half wondering if you even played it.

Such an incredible experience needs no patches. 

I realize you're just arguing for the sake of arguing here but I still think it goes without saying that people making a game in 2017 intended for it to look better than one made for the same series in 2007.

With the kind of money involved in making an AAA game the whole disorganized mess and lack of direction isn't really excusable IMO but, if that many people were really being yanked willy nilly from the project I understand it being difficult to get their shit together and recover once they realized what a mess they had.

Really not arguing for the sake of it, I just really liked the game. I didn't even start butting heads until he responded to me. Sure I understand that the animation was worse than expected, but I care very little, and seeing as there can be great games without good animation, I don't think people should care too much, as the animation was passable.

Having a year and a half to ditch most of what they'd worked on previously and stitch the game together with bubble gum and string, not having any of the writing finalized beforehand and basically completely skipping the polish phase is going to hurt a game in a lot more ways than just how it looks.

A few paragraphs summing up the article for those too lazy to click. The comparison video is pretty telling, assuming that was actually from the game at the time and not a mock up.

Some said what made the crunch worse than previous Mass Effect games was what the developers called regression. On a typical video game project, the last few months are devoted to “polish,” a phase of the game in which the developers can fix bugs, fine-tune mechanics, and improve existing content to make everything feel as smooth as possible. In the final months of many games that turn out to be good, developers say that the game gets markedly better in that short final stretch. On Andromeda, however, everything just kept regressing. “We’ll put something together, and it’s been bug tested and signed off and approved,” said a developer, “We’d say, ‘OK, we can now move on from that to the next thing.’ And while our backs are turned, what we’d just put together falls apart.”

The root causes of this regression could be tough to identify. Sometimes they were as complicated as an engineer updating a core system; other times, they were as simple as a character modeler changing the look of an NPC. It was draining, developers said, because they felt like they were constantly redoing parts of the game that they thought they’d already finished. “The types of problems that arise from the entire project coming together in the last year and a half really compound at the end,” said one developer.

This video, comparing leaked footage of Andromeda from April 2016 to a final build of the game, is one example of what this regression could have looked like. The downgrade in quality could have been caused by any number of factors ranging from the lighting changing to the animations taking up too much memory, a source said, but those were the sort of problems they faced. While we’ve seen other games get graphical downgrades from their initial trailers to final products (Watch Dogs, The Witcher 3), it was unusual to feel like they were regressing this much so late in development, that source said.

The “downstream” teams—effects, cinematics, audio—were hit the hardest during the final months of development. “Because the entire project was behind schedule and teams were wrapping up later than ideally they should have, that just compounded even more on the downstream teams,” said one person who worked on the game.

There was a lingering feeling of hopelessness during those final months, developers said, and some who worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda say it was the most challenging project they’d ever faced.

“For the last few months of the game, we spent most of our effort just trying to keep it together rather than polishing,” said an Andromeda developer. “Just trying to stay ahead of how quickly it was falling apart.”

Yeah, and there was a lot of development shit going on with New Vegas, and that was one of the best games of all time. Again I understand there was developmental problems, but I couldn't give a shit because I really wouldn't have known or cared with as good a game they put out.

Hmm, End was right, your opinions on games really are shitty and invalid.

You didn't like New Vegas?

If so, you are retarded.

Actually I misread your post, but you liking New Vegas doesn't mean much if you also liked Andromeda, because you are a person incapable of telling chocolate pudding from poop.

Again, you've yet to name many issues with Andromeda.

Well you see this very discussion we're having about the game right now centers around a helpful article that does just that as well as going into the behind the scene reasons for it all in more detail than I ever could, so I haven't seen a reason for just repeating it all point by point when anyone interested can just read it for themselves. But I mean, I guess I could repost the link if you really need me to?

The article points out the endless production issues that plagued the game, but as I've said similar issues plagued New Vegas. Your point?

Yeah, but the beards are AIDS. They should've put that as a higher priority than relationships or glitches. I'm serious, I've honestly never been legitimately grossed out by a texture in a video game before. If the walls in Dead Space had been made out of that patchy, moist-looking scruff on the edge of shep's beard rather than flesh, It would've been an actual horror game to me, as opposed to a horror-themed action game.

Never had a beard, strangely enough.

If your face starts looking anything like the sea-sponge shag on Shepard's face, then for the sake of all things still sacred in the world, continue not having a beard. It's beards like that which will disgust future species that come upon our civilization, in the same way that eye stalks and lamprey mouths disgust humanity.