With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that is both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly. Sometimes we also just cover topics that we find interesting and want to discuss.

Mass Effect™: Andromeda won’t be receiving anymore single player updates

Much to the dismay of many fans The Mass Effect Andromeda Team has announced that the 1.10 patch was the final update for  Mass Effect Andromeda’s single player. If you would like to read the whole announcement you can find it here.

Image by Origin.com

Ozzy’s thoughts on the subject:  With Bioware dropping (single player) support for Mass Effect Andromeda, as a gamer I (along with everyone else of course) saw this coming miles down the road, saw the dirt flying in the air before we even heard the engine rumbling no matter how many times they said “that’s just the wind.”  (They being EA/Bioware.)

As a die-hard fan of Mass Effect, I’m extremely sadden and a bit pissed off really.  Yes ME:A wasn’t the best received and had problems (THOSE EYES!!!) but just like Mass Effect 1, it had a lot of promise and a good characters that I wanted expanded on.  (Minor Spoilers) And like all of us, I wanted  to know what happened with the last Ark that showed up at the end of the game and have the Ryders run off and save the day, this time much more confident and self assured after the main ending.  It was obviously going to be DLC but now we’ll never know in-game, we’ll known by comic. (End Minor Spoilers)

I saw ME:A as a “soft reboot” of the series.  They’re weren’t getting ride of everything and starting over, they were taking the universe that we liked and moving it somewhere with a worth goal, starting civilization over having learned from all the problems before.  The one thing I never seem to see about ME:A is, again, yes it’s not the best of the series but just like ME1 it had promise.  When I played ME1 the first time…UGH…I honestly almost couldn’t stand it.  The interface was very clunky (sound familiar?) the weapons felt under powered to the point of almost uselessness (again, familiar?) even, the animations except for certain spots could’ve been better (do I have to say that word again?), a lot of the side missions felt repetitive to the point that I stopped doing them (FAMILIAR!? Damnit I said it again) and I had the “overheating guns” bug (over heat guns they refuse to cool off, have to reload the game to fix) more times then I think anyone ever has in the history of ever.

While with all those negatives, the universe, the characters (even with the bad animations,) music and story kept me going, granted not forever (I have only ever fully played ME1 twice, ME2 & ME3 I have played more than 20 times each, lost count) but it gave me a lot of promise.  The sequels they learned, refined, and made even better (yeah yeah shut up about ME3’s ending, WE ALL KNOW, we’ve moved on.)

But as we know nowadays, first impressions are everything and while the game didn’t do great, it didn’t do bad either, it was just “okay.”  And while the, now returned Casey Hudson, has mentioned that Mass Effect isn’t dead and that “everyone here loves the universe to not go back to it,”, I don’t feel as bad when I found out the news the other day, but how long we have to wait will probably be a LONG time from now.

I’m more or less annoyed how they handled it.  People asking questions about DLC: “We’ll have news soon.”  Studio moves, people asking does that mean we’ll not get DLC: “We’ll have stuff to say soon.”  Half the team gets allocated to help out with Battlefront 2, does this mean no DLC: “it’s not dead, we’ll have news soon.”  Yay great patches that fix a lot of technical and game play problems, so when’s the DLC showing up: “That was our last patch and no more support for the game other than multiplayer. Enjoy.”

While I enjoy the multiplayer of both ME3 and MEA, I don’t see it telling any decent stories (long involved, serious) anytime soon unless they put in so much support that it makes you wonder why they dropped single player support.

So for us Mass Effect lovers, looks like we’ll be having to wait a long time before we get another one.  All we can hope for is that Anthem will do well enough that they won’t have to “fall back” on Mass Effect to make up for everything they lost cause that, I think, would be very bad for the series.

TL;DR: They could’ve handled dropping support for MEA better than they did.  Mass Effect ISN’T dead but it will be asleep for what will probably be a very long time unless Anthem fails.

Overwatch Hero Balance Updates (Aug 24, 2017)

  So the Overwatch team released a video that you can watch in full bellow.

The main change they are looking to make sweeping changes to how the hero Mercy works.  They want to decrease the use and the potency of her resurrect ability to only allow reviving of one player at a time instead of how it currently works where she can revive everyone at once if they are within her range.  They want to give her a new ultimate that they are calling Valkyrie that will grant her the ability to fly and boost all of her abilities. While using her ultimate ability her healing and damage boost will affect all allies in a chain type effect. She will have increased movement range and speed, obviously she can fly. Her pistol will get increased damage and infinite ammo making her a bit more useful as a battle medic. What does that mean for her and Overwatch moving forward ?

Image by https://blzgdapipro-a.akamaihd.net

Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject: While I’m not personally very concerned or troubled by her sweeping changes I do feel this speaks volumes to the state of the game in general. I find it quite concerning that such a large number of changes are set to take place to one character at once. These changes are huge and they sail over the normal “balance changes” that we come to see from Overwatch and other games that are still receiving active development.

So that brings me to my concern when it comes to Overwatch, when will the Overwatch team be happy with the state of the game ? With the ability for them to keep making whatever changes they feel necessary, do they have a line in the sand with completely reworking, changing abilities or adding removing them ? I don’t think they have thought that far ahead in development and if they have, they have yet to tell the player base. This I feel all started when they gave Symmetra two ultimate’s.  I feel like they set a precedent that no character is safe from huge changes including adding more ultimate’s when they feel they are needed.

On one hand I’m quite happy that changes are being made and the game continue to gets updates but for a game that seems so focused on being a competitive environment it seems to me that it would be difficult to continue to hold its self to this standard when such huge changes happen to the game every couple of months. They are moving the skill ceiling in the middle of competitive seasons as we saw with the release of Doomfist at first being unavailable mid season and then seeing him being allowed about a week later. This sort of moving target as far as what the player base can expect with updates and consistency to the characters abilities and skills is something that I find quite frustrating. I can only hope that once the Overwatch team gets things how they want they stick to bug fixes and cosmetics because if things continue to keep drastically change things I feel they will drive players away with the constant changes. Only time will tell if this becomes a reality or not.