Why aren't there more mods for Mass Effect Andromeda?

[sadhukar1]

There are nude mods out there but that's pretty much it...

 

I was looking for a lewd mod (i.e. underwear on underarmour) and not an outright nude one, it kinda looks tacky otherwise.

 

Strangely, I can recreate the look of FemRyder in lewd armour in Xcom 2 but not in mass effect itself ?

[davisev5225]

Because Andromeda was a disaster all across the board.  The graphics (textures, animations, models) were laughably bad, the writing was awful, the plot was all over the place, and the studio (BioWare Montreal, if I recall correctly) was more interested in scoring "woke" points than admitting to their issues and trying to fix them.  The only good thing I can say is the sound design was... ok.

 

Also, Mass Effect games are notoriously difficult to mod anyway, due to the way they used the Unreal Engine.   It did at least make for a neat little phone-based RC vehicle.  I waited until the price dropped out from under them, sharply, then bought one.  ?

 

The reality is no one wants to replay it, so there's little motivation to do anything with it.

Edited September 13, 2021 by davisev5225

[27X]

AndDramaDuh is simply not worth modding. ever. at all. for any reason.

[Raiven]

ME 1-3 used unreal engine, Andromeda was built with Frostbite, which I believe is more difficult to mod.

[sadhukar1]

3 minutes ago, Raiven said:

ME 1-3 used unreal engine, Andromeda was built with Frostbite, which I believe is more difficult to mod.

 

But there's a mod manager out there that made things alot easier? The Frosty Tool suite comes with an editor as well.

 

11 hours ago, davisev5225 said:

Because Andromeda was a disaster all across the board.  The graphics (textures, animations, models) were laughably bad, the writing was awful, the plot was all over the place, and the studio (BioWare Montreal, if I recall correctly) was more interested in scoring "woke" points than admitting to their issues and trying to fix them.  The only good thing I can say is the sound design was... ok.

 

Also, Mass Effect games are notoriously difficult to mod anyway, due to the way they used the Unreal Engine.   It did at least make for a neat little phone-based RC vehicle.  I waited until the price dropped out from under them, sharply, then bought one.  ?

 

The reality is no one wants to replay it, so there's little motivation to do anything with it.

 

I just picked it up on discount. It's...not that bad? 

 

I probably wouldn't have gotten it full price, especially after learning that they just stopped patching it altogether a mere 5 months or so after release, but honestly I don't think it's as bad as people say it is.

[UBCS121]

Andromeda definitely isn't as bad as people on the internet keep telling themselves it is. I think it's actually pretty good, though definitely not without its issues. I think the hubbub on social media hurt it a lot though, and that killed its sales, which killed dev support, which killed playerbase, which killed mods. Lewd mods at least, there's a handful of appearance and armor mods for it online, similar to Dragon Age Inquisition.

[27X]

1 hour ago, UBCS121 said:

Andromeda definitely isn't as bad as people on the internet keep telling themselves it is. I think it's actually pretty good, though definitely not without its issues. I think the hubbub on social media hurt it a lot though, and that killed its sales, which killed dev support, which killed playerbase, which killed mods. Lewd mods at least, there's a handful of appearance and armor mods for it online, similar to Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

Wrong.

 

It's worse, especially for anyone that actually played it.

[nothindoin]

It was a bit rough at release but after a couple patches I thought the game was fucking awesome. Been through it a couple times. Found it highly enjoyable and, frankly, the haters could have hated more quietly and we may have actually got to see how the fucking story played out over the trilogy. Now? Who knows.

[davisev5225]

1 hour ago, nothindoin said:

It was a bit rough at release but after a couple patches I thought the game was fucking awesome. Been through it a couple times. Found it highly enjoyable and, frankly, the haters could have hated more quietly and we may have actually got to see how the fucking story played out over the trilogy. Now? Who knows.

 

I pre-ordered it.  Whoops!

 

In my opinion, the hate is justified.  The game was developed by the team that previously only worked on the ME3 multiplayer.  They had little experience making a single-player story and world, and it showed.  The combat was top-notch, but everything else (except the aforementioned sound design) was just awful due to it being amateur hour at BioWare.

 

The patches they did release did little to fix the real issues in the game - that being an ADHD spastic story that manages to be simultaneously shallow and confusing/convoluted.  Ryder might as well be "Mary Sue, the videogame character", the mcguffin that got us to an entirely different galaxy was never previously hinted at (and probably won't ever come up again in the Milky Way galaxy...), the new alien species lack any depth or character and seem to exist solely as 1-dimensional inserts for whatever the story needs them to be... etc.

 

Yes, the post-release patches fixed the glaring texture issues, repaired some of the more broken animations (the bug-eye conversational animations come to mind here...), etc., but that's just polish on a turd.  At the end of the day, you still get shit all over your hands.

 

For the record, I did try re-playing it about a year ago and tossed all my prior biases out the window in the process.  I still couldn't stand it, and found all the same reasons as before to not like the game all over again.

 

It's just "thinly veiled angst, the game" dressed up in Mass Effect costumes.

Edited September 14, 2021 by davisev5225

[SkyTem]

Because the game was a huge change from what made the previous 3 in the series good and generally sucked ?

[zorebird]

I actually played it several times and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Still playing it and going to play it after this comment.  

[bonifide]

It had some problems but one of the biggest IMO is the fucking enemies. They literally went to a new universe just 2 see 2 new races. The devs couldn't bother create more races just gave a bullshit excuse.

[ButtJutsu]

Because the game isn't fun for normal people.

[sen4mi]

On 9/13/2021 at 9:44 PM, davisev5225 said:

 

... the mcguffin that got us to an entirely different galaxy was never previously hinted at (and probably won't ever come up again in the Milky Way galaxy...), ...

 

That mcguffin was a direct consequence of the ME3 endings, along with an awareness of how wartime events typically play out.

 

It was also a direct and literal consequence of the "mass effect" concept.

 

But, sure, presumably it could have used additional character development.

[davisev5225]

4 hours ago, sen4mi said:

 

That mcguffin was a direct consequence of the ME3 endings, along with an awareness of how wartime events typically play out.

 

It was also a direct and literal consequence of the "mass effect" concept.

 

But, sure, presumably it could have used additional character development.

 

I'm a little fuzzy since I haven't played the game in a while, but if I recall correctly, the development on that drive system was supposed to have started early in the ME2 timeline.  ME3 hadn't happened yet.  In fact, the entire initial plot was to "start over" in a new galaxy before the reapers arrived.  They launched right around the start of ME3.

[nothindoin]

On 12/11/2021 at 5:55 PM, bonifide said:

It had some problems but one of the biggest IMO is the fucking enemies. They literally went to a new universe just 2 see 2 new races. The devs couldn't bother create more races just gave a bullshit excuse.

The story takes place in one tiny corner of a new galaxy. One which is actively being conquered by an empire that assimilates and co-opts the genetic structures of every race it encounters. Does it really surprise you that there's only one major native race advanced enough and left trying to hold it's own?

[sen4mi]

11 hours ago, davisev5225 said:

 

I'm a little fuzzy since I haven't played the game in a while, but if I recall correctly, the development on that drive system was supposed to have started early in the ME2 timeline.  ME3 hadn't happened yet.  In fact, the entire initial plot was to "start over" in a new galaxy before the reapers arrived.  They launched right around the start of ME3.

 

Right -- given the way ME3 played out, with its wildly divergent endings -- the only way to continue the series with a consistent story was to move the story out of the light cone of those endings.

 

So basically, they took the mass effect concept and took one of the sorts of desperate attempts that you get during wartime and decided that that attempt would have succeeded.

 

In other words, the mcguffin was the mass effect itself (amped up with geth or geth-like technology -- you did notice the AI in MEA, yes?).

[untestedpower]

Even outside of the bad animations and the fact that most of the game world was empty space with nothing in it, the characters were either bland, carbon copies of characters from the original trilogy but also bland, or downright insufferable. The dialogue was also terrible (my face is tired). Also most of them have sex scenes with nudity anyway, so if you want to see Cora or blue shrek naked all you have to do is watch a YouTube clip.

[Togurolucifer]

 who wants to mod this abomination?

[davisev5225]

15 hours ago, sen4mi said:

 

Right -- given the way ME3 played out, with its wildly divergent endings -- the only way to continue the series with a consistent story was to move the story out of the light cone of those endings.

 

So basically, they took the mass effect concept and took one of the sorts of desperate attempts that you get during wartime and decided that that attempt would have succeeded.

 

That's a cop-out and you know it.

 

  

15 hours ago, sen4mi said:

 

In other words, the mcguffin was the mass effect itself (amped up with geth or geth-like technology -- you did notice the AI in MEA, yes?).

 

Ehhh, only kind of the mass effect itself.  There was never any basis shown for a ship to be able to create the mass effect using its own drive systems; even the reapers used the relays to move around, and they created and/or controlled the technology.  Andromeda broke the rules of its own universe.

 

Also, there was only one AI, and it too was a mcguffin.  The story writers seemed incapable of anything other than cheap tricks to explain their game.

[zorebird]

I've  heard EA always interferes in the devs which is why nothing ever gets done right. Which is if I'm not mistaken is what screwed the pooch on Cyberpunk.

 

MEA had an abundance of logical inconsistencies and probably well over a hundered errors that needed corrected. The concept was very good, the execution poor yes but still fun to play as long as you didn't pay full price for the 8$ I spent, I liked it. Best price for a game I enjoyed since I paid 5$ for Planescape Torment.

 

In the right hands it would have been a golden game and the best of the MA games maybe even it's own trilogy. Alas it was not. 

[bonifide]

On 12/13/2021 at 8:37 AM, nothindoin said:

The story takes place in one tiny corner of a new galaxy. One which is actively being conquered by an empire that assimilates and co-opts the genetic structures of every race it encounters. Does it really surprise you that there's only one major native race advanced enough and left trying to hold it's own?

I know the story and I beat the game. It's still stupid it's a reason its not getting a sequel. It's was just trying to be a prototype for their other flopped game Anthem. 

[davisev5225]

17 hours ago, zorebird said:

I've  heard EA always interferes in the devs which is why nothing ever gets done right. Which is if I'm not mistaken is what screwed the pooch on Cyberpunk.

 

EA had no involvement in Cyberpunk 2077, that was developed and published by CD Projekt Red.

[sen4mi]

On 12/14/2021 at 2:06 AM, davisev5225 said:

 

That's a cop-out and you know it.

 

 

 

I am scratching my head about your "cop-out" claim.

 

I remember forum conversations in the post ME:2 era, where devs wanted impactful decision making in the game, the sort of thing which would eventually lead to the divergent endings of ME:3. And the roots of the ME:A story line were proposed, including the jump to the nearby galaxy and the "geth technology augmented mass effect" mechanism (along with the risks that would accompany a jump like).

 

What kind of responsibilities were you thinking of here, which had been abandoned?

 

[davisev5225]

5 hours ago, sen4mi said:

 

 

I am scratching my head about your "cop-out" claim.

 

I remember forum conversations in the post ME:2 era, where devs wanted impactful decision making in the game, the sort of thing which would eventually lead to the divergent endings of ME:3. And the roots of the ME:A story line were proposed, including the jump to the nearby galaxy and the "geth technology augmented mass effect" mechanism (along with the risks that would accompany a jump like).

 

What kind of responsibilities were you thinking of here, which had been abandoned?

 

 

The responsibility was that they laid out a particular set of technology, then waved the "Geth magic stick" at it to travel to another galaxy.  As I said previously, they never established that any ships, including the Reapers, could induce the mass effect on their own.  Everything had to use the relays.  Suddenly the Geth could augment a ship's normal FTL drive to create the mass effect, and also make it so powerful that it could jump to another galaxy?  If that was possible, why didn't the Geth do that on their own long before?

 

If you can point to a specific discussion that includes developers from the Mass Effect team(s), I might start to believe you.  Until then, it's a very bad joke.

Edited December 17, 2021 by davisev5225