OH GOD BIOWARE WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Osterbaum

Oh btw, I checked up on what EDI says and apparently the line is "This ship is nearly twice the mass of the previous Normandy. It is more difficult to land the ship on high gravity worlds."

So nothing there about it being impossible. Also another thing; I always felt that the fact that Sovereign tried to use the stealthy route to get the Citadel relay open in the first place was because the Reapers weren't a 100% on their odds in a full scale war (even if they were, say 99,9% but let's say they're perfectionist and nothing if not patient). Now of course all of that goes out the window for me if all of the galactic civilizations couldn't detect the Reapers coming towards Earth before they actually get there.

also might have something to do with, they seem to get only one new reaper each cycle, or at the very least its a low number. They probably try very hard to keep their losses at zero

[Melfice]

Originally Posted by "Half Assed" Karesh

1. If Sovereign was so sure of his success, and Saren punching none withstanding accurate in that assessment, why didn't it just go right the hell in and blow everything up to begin with? Saren needed the conduit to get into the Citadel, but from what we see he could have just as easily boarded from one of the geth invasion ships.
2. Hell, with his pre-game SPECTRE status Saren could have just walked right the fuck in anyway. So what was the point in ANY of it?

I think Saren thought the Conduit was something else than an entryway into the Citadel. I'm fairly certain the Council thought so. It's been ages since I last played ME1, though.
By the time Saren found out it was just a miniature Relay, his SPECTRE status was already revoked, and he was to be arrested on sight. And I don't think Saren was indoctrinated until a few months, maybe a year, before Eden Prime happened.

[Marc v4.0]

Bioware defends their day one DLC

Originally Posted by Article

Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson has taken to Twitter to say that the From Ashes DLC pack was put together once the main game was finished at the start of the year. “It takes about 3 months from “content complete” to bug-fix, certify, manufacture, and ship game discs,” he tweeted. “In that time we work on DLC.”

I mean...yeah. That is a true thing. People whine and complain and moan about 'wasting time and resources', but reality works as above.

TotalBiscuit was brought up a bit earlier, with his video about Bioware and taking DLC too far, but even he came up against this fact in a series of Mailboxes he did. In one he slammed a game's devs for wasting resources and time adding day-one content, only to be contacted by one of the devs of said game that informed him of the exact thing Casey Hudson says above.

[Ramary]

But we knew of the Prothean squad mate from the script leak all the way back in June.

In other words, they are flat out lying now.

There is also the fact that they did this before, but with less plot important characters (DA:O and ME2) but it was free to anyone buying the game new. That could be seen as a "test of brand loyalty" I guess. This is money grubbing.

[Melfice]

Originally Posted by Ramary

But we knew of the Prothean squad mate from the script leak all the way back in June.

In other words, they are flat out lying now.

[snip] That could be seen as a "test of brand loyalty" I guess. This is money grubbing.

This is going to be called out as fanboying, but hey! Why not?

Presumably, this was planned way back then. Then the deadline came. You know, the deadline that was supposed to be back in November? December? Whichever of the two. End 2011.
Anyway, From The Ashes wasn't finished, or at least not to a satisfactory level.
Deadline gets moved to meet the new release date in March, for bugfixes and polish.
From The Ashes is still kept out, because the bugfixes and polish take more resources than expected.
Game gets printed, team starts working on implementing From The Ashes as DLC.

And everybody lives happily ever after.
Except the people who like to shout that it's all a government conspiracy and wear tinfoil hats. ... and maybe they're happy too, in a sort of way.

THE END

One scenario, amongst many.
Not saying it couldn't be money grabbing, of course. Just saying it's not always a ploy to grab more money from you. (They are a company, though. It's why you pay €0.70 extra for your packet of sauce at Burger King/McDonalds/wherever.)

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Ramary

But we knew of the Prothean squad mate from the script leak all the way back in June.

so? they have tons of ideas, and new ideas pop-up while developing. It is basically unheard of for everything you want in the game to be in the game, thats what trapped Duke Nukem in development hell for over a decade. A game is never "finished" only "good enough". Anyone that makes games can tell you that

It is possible that they wanted a Prothean squad member (I honestly dont know why) to be part of the story but for any number of reasons weren't able to include it. Then after the game they wanted to launch was completed they noticed "hey these artists and programmers aren't doing anything, why not have them work on that Prothean idea we had"

[Nikose Tyris]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

so? they have tons of ideas, and new ideas pop-up while developing. It is basically unheard of for everything you want in the game to be in the game, thats what trapped Duke Nukem in development hell for over a decade. A game is never "finished" only "good enough". Anyone that makes games can tell you that

Hi! I'm here to tell you that, no, you're wrong!

There are a pair of key documents that need to be completed prior to even striking the first line of code for a Title- the "Game Design Document"; followed by the "Technical Design Document".

The GDD explains everything in detail that is expected to appear in the game; the TDD [Which, actually, You do get a fair bunch of code done before writing out, but it's still done WAY before your title even hits mid-alpha] that outlines HOW the code works, and is a safe fallback in case you hire a new Dev who's full of the stupid, and buggers shit up.

While a game may hit the 'Good Enough' stage, it's a sign of a shitty development team, shitty management, shitty corporate planning, or a combination of the three.

"It's almost unheard of to get everything you wanted into a game" is only excused by hardware limitations, not by "We're cutting this character to be put as DLC".

While I am entirely willing to believe that EA is a combination of all 3, I'll wait until I see/hear someone tell me whether it's On-Disc Day 1 DLC.

[Aerozord]

This explains alot about how things actually work though the process. Specifically how things come up during actual production. Once you actually start coding you sometimes find you underestimated the resources a feature requires, or during early testing find it has issues with the user interface. You might work on a character and learn it doesn't mesh well with the others or internal conflict hampers design, even just community backlash. Opposite is also true, while working on a feature you come up with another way of doing it, or a new character idea.

Lets looks at a game with a more transparent development, Minecraft. Thoughout features have been removed, added, and altered during its creation.

I dont get how you can have the impression that they come up with all story elements and features before they start a project. Sure they could preproduce the hell out of it, then shoot down any new idea and include features they intended even if they dont work in practice, but that sounds really stupid.

[Nikose Tyris]

You know what

I'm just going to never not ignore every one of your posts, and pretend that your knowledge of a single indie company, and Penny Arcade, qualifies you to dictate how every other company works

Including EA, a company that I was working on the inside of throughout several projects

Because I keep forgetting that Aerozord can syphon information up through his ass and out his mouth, and it is automatically undeniable fact and everyone who disagrees has a 'sounds really stupid'.

[Nikose Tyris]

Like, are you functionally capable of seeing that a Company with a legitimate, limited Budget [Penny-Arcade] and something that started as a one-man indie company [Minecraft] Would not follow standard development rules and therefore be absolutely fucking incompatible with EA and standard large company development, or is this just as far beyond you as comprehension of the difference between intelligence and sentience.