Not so much the ending itself but just the whole way the public relations utterly failed between Bioware and the community.
The endings of Mass Effect 3 were all terrible. Bioware ended up changing them but didn’t even listen to the community. The community screamed “These endings suck, don’t make any sense, and don’t fit in with the themes laid out in rest of the game and the previous games. Rewrite them!”
Bioware responded with “Oh, so you want more clarity on what happened? Here it is.”
They acted like they heard the community but just ended up releasing something that nobody even asked for.
I’m afraid 343 will fall into the same trap, especially with the split between the casual and hardcore fanbase asking for two totally different types games.
Will they appease both sides? Will they appease only one? Will they appease neither and do something completely different?
Everything is riding on this first Titlr Update. My faith in 343 will either break or be restored and the future of their DLC sales depends on it.
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Seiously making this game better requires just one thing: NO MORE INFINITY SLAYER.
Just make simple, classic Team Slayer, and this game will instantly become better. But they didn’t even include it as a -Yoinking!- option. That’s how moronic 343i are.
As much as I’d like every game I ever play to end like Star Wars 4: A New Hope, I respect when someone uses creativity to go in a different direction. All I wanted out of a Mass Effect 3 ending was that 1) I would destroy every last Reaper, 2) Shepherd would live. The fixed ending let me have both of those things. I like to imagine Shep got to retire to a little piece of land with his love interest, but they also leave it open to where you can imagine he gave his life for the cause, or that he went on to save the galaxy again.
They left the ending of Halo 4 at a place where Halo 5 could go in a multitude of different directions. They could even decide to bring Cortana back since apparently a piece of her is stored somewhere. 343 will save the day because the highest level boss will decide it’s better to admit you’re wrong and make profits than be stubborn and lose money. They make more money when they make us happy.
> As much as I’d like every game I ever play to end like Star Wars 4: A New Hope, I respect when someone uses creativity to go in a different direction. All I wanted out of a Mass Effect 3 ending was that 1) I would destroy every last Reaper, 2) Shepherd would live. The fixed ending let me have both of those things. I like to imagine Shep got to retire to a little piece of land with his love interest, but they also leave it open to where you can imagine he gave his life for the cause, or that he went on to save the galaxy again.
>
> They left the ending of Halo 4 at a place where Halo 5 could go in a multitude of different directions. They could even decide to bring Cortana back since apparently a piece of her is stored somewhere. 343 will save the day because the highest level boss will decide it’s better to admit you’re wrong and make profits than be stubborn and lose money. They make more money when they make us happy.
i don’t think you understood me. I wasn’t commenting on the campaign of Halo 4. I’m talking about how the developer is dealing with the community.
So far, we have heard the same dreaded silence from 343 as we did Bioware. Am I going to wake up to disappointment to find out that this first title update fixes things that weren’t even high up on my list of issues.
I think 343 said out with the old and in with the new. I dont think they wanted to appeal to halo 2/3 crowd . they want the reach people and NEW PLAYERS. thats why IMO they made the gameplay somewhat easier . all the hardcore fans from ten years ago is an older generation. I think 343 main goal with halo 4 was to compete with CoD.
I think every developer should stick to their guns. Hear out the community. Sure. Consider feedback. Yes. But ultimately, I want 343 to decide on their own whether the game is playing as they’d envisioned, whether they’d like to make some changes, and whether our feedback is valid in a user experience sense as well as a game design sense.
That last part is very important, IMO. They are the designers. For sure. And I want them to have confidence in that. But I don’t want them to get a big head and discount any of our design-based feedback.
Personally, I find a few flaws in their approach to the design of this game. I think we have some great ideas from that angle, and I want them to engage us in discussion about those things. They don’t have to defend themselves, but I would love to hear their rationale behind such things as random ordnance drops and randomized, unfair, and unbalanced personal ordnance.
I want 343 to come at us and say upfront, “Here’s the game we wanted to make. These are our guns. We’re sticking to them. That said, if you want real talk about certain aspects of this game, if you want to ask hard-hitting questions and propose constructive feedback, we’re willing to have that discussion.”
I don’t feel like 343 has to engage or answer to its core community, but I would really respect a developer that respected its community enough to talk to us as if we have the same level of investment in their game as they do. We don’t because they poured their blood, sweat, and tears into it for years, but that doesn’t mean we love it any less.
> I think 343 said out with the old and in with the new. I dont think they wanted to appeal to halo 2/3 crowd . they want the reach people and NEW PLAYERS. thats why IMO they made the gameplay somewhat easier . all the hardcore fans from ten years ago is an older generation. <mark>I think 343 main goal with halo 4 was to compete with CoD.</mark>
And they failed because Halo’s fanbase is so disappointed in H4, they left for other games.
NO. Simply, no. You cannot apply the massive controversy that was the ending of Mass Effect 3, to your complaints against Halo 4’s Multiplayer.
Casual crowds like it, okay? Now, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with wanting a more hard-core experience, but that’s what we got.
There was no false advertising, promises of things that never were, a complete butchering of the series, or sudden drastic change.
Halo 4’s Multiplayer may be incorporating a lot of the latest trend, but it’s still Halo. That’s really all there is to it.
Though, I must admit, a classic Slayer playlist would be cool.
Even if you think they’re saying “out with the old . . .,” this game is still called Halo. It needs to at least act like Halo require some teamwork in multiplayer instead of being the lone wolf CoD fan fest it is now.
And I do kind of believe 343 has lost touch with the community. It’s as if they’re viewing this game and themselves as perfection and trying to silence any kind of opinion.
The OP isn’t comparing the multiplayer to Mass Effects ending, they’re trying to point out that 343 doesn’t seem to hear, or even care, about the community. If you aren’t an MLG all-star or paid member of the company, your opinion seems dead to them.
I’m not bashing anyone, but I don’t like what 343 is doing to Halo. It’s like getting in a familiar car with a stranger driving it, then going down an unfamiliar road. Your first instinct is “get out of the car” but the car is still moving “i.e. the 343 loving section of the community pushing unwillingly forward” and your curiose to see where the stranger takes you. But will you regret it in the end?
Rewriting the entire mass effect endings would have been an insane amount of work and cost an incredible amount of money. Bioware did the only thing they could do to appease the fans.
I suspect the situation is much the same here. The community demands drastic changes to the game but that isn’t going to happen. You’ll get minor updates but don’t expect them to change the entire game for you. Learn to accept what you have. If you don’t like it, move on.
> Rewriting the entire mass effect endings would have been an insane amount of work and cost an incredible amount of money. Bioware did the only thing they could do to appease the fans.
Indoctrination, dog. Everybody wanted it to be indoctrination theory? And you know what? They could have sold it.
As disgusting as it would have been on EA’s part, I would have bought the ending for the game on top of the full price of the game. I’ve spent way too much time and effort on the Mass Effect series for my choices to not matter at all like they were promised.
Indoctrination would have been genius (though controversial) and would have scored Bioware a lot of money.
> I suspect the situation is much the same here. The community demands drastic changes to the game but that isn’t going to happen. You’ll get minor updates but don’t expect them to change the entire game for you. Learn to accept what you have. If you don’t like it, move on.
I DON’T WANT TO MOVE ON!!! I love Halo. I really do. But this game doesn’t really feel like Halo. Every gametype feels like some kind of wacky gametype you would find on Team Actionsack in Halo 3 and Reach.
All that needs to be done are two things.
Give is more options…over everything. It probably isn’t that hard to put in some code that allows us to adjust the auto aim/aim assist, the power of each individual weapon, and the custom games options that Halo 3 and Reach had.
Allow the community to vote for their favorite settings to be implemented into the playlists.
I’m sure a big portion of the community would love a 1-50 rank classic playlist with reduced auto aim/aim assist, nerfed DMR and boltshot, weapons spawn on map, no ordinance, restricted loadouts, and buffed vehicles.
Editting this simple things should have been possible in the first place. Hell, we are nearing the NEXT generation of games and this game still doesn’t allow audio adjust. I CAN’T FRICKEN HEAR THE MUSIC IN THE CAMPAIGN.
Let’s just see what they do. I hope they listen to the community.
> Even if you think they’re saying “out with the old . . .,” this game is still called Halo. It needs to at least act like Halo require some teamwork in multiplayer instead of being the lone wolf CoD fan fest it is now.
>
> And I do kind of believe 343 has lost touch with the community. It’s as if they’re viewing this game and themselves as perfection and trying to silence any kind of opinion.
>
> The OP isn’t comparing the multiplayer to Mass Effects ending, they’re trying to point out that 343 doesn’t seem to hear, or even care, about the community. If you aren’t an MLG all-star or paid member of the company, your opinion seems dead to them.
>
> I’m not bashing anyone, but I don’t like what 343 is doing to Halo. It’s like getting in a familiar car with a stranger driving it, then going down an unfamiliar road. Your first instinct is “get out of the car” but the car is still moving “i.e. the 343 loving section of the community pushing unwillingly forward” and your curiose to see where the stranger takes you. But will you regret it in the end?
It should never have been “out with the old, in with the new”.
It should have been “In with the new but keep the old just in case the new sucks”.
> > > Rewriting the entire mass effect endings would have been an insane amount of work and cost an incredible amount of money. Bioware did the only thing they could do to appease the fans.
> >
> > Indoctrination, dog. Everybody wanted it to be indoctrination theory? And you know what? They could have sold it.
> >
> > As disgusting as it would have been on EA’s part, I would have bought the ending for the game on top of the full price of the game. I’ve spent way too much time and effort on the Mass Effect series for my choices to not matter at all like they were promised.
> >
> > Indoctrination would have been genius (though controversial) and would have scored Bioware a lot of money.
>
> Who is this everybody you speak of? Indoctrination was a decent theory, but not everyone was on board with it. And guess what? If the developers simply decide to listen to the loudest whiners, what does that do for creativity? It’s THEIR story, they can do what they want with it. And besides, how is an ending any good if everyone expects it?
I kept hearing about how the endings were terrible but after breaking down and looking at the endings, I fail to see how.
Of all the “problems” with the endings it boiled down to basically: BioWare didn’t explicitly tell us every minuta of detail between these scene cuts. Never less, the community screamed and kicked for “their” ending and BioWare refused to cave to their seemingly childish demands for a storybook ending. Instead they expanded upon the ending to really explain how all the scenes actually do in fact work.
Just because your fans have unrealistic demands doesn’t mean you’re a bad developer for not caving to them.
> I kept hearing about how the endings were terrible but after breaking down and looking at the endings, I fail to see how.
>
> Of all the “problems” with the endings it boiled down to basically: BioWare didn’t explicitly tell us every minuta of detail between these scene cuts. Never less, the community screamed and kicked for “their” ending and BioWare refused to cave to their seemingly childish demands for a storybook ending. Instead they expanded upon the ending to really explain how all the scenes actually do in fact work.
>
> Just because your fans have unrealistic demands doesn’t mean you’re a bad developer for not caving to them.
Not only that, but a lot of people complained that they didn’t have an ending for every single tiny different choice in the series. So people were asking for unrealistic demands like asking for a different ending for two players who made exactly all the same choices but one.
A lot of “fans” failed to realise how ME3 was a collection of endings throughout the whole game.
> A lot of “fans” failed to realise how ME3 was a collection of endings throughout the whole game.
When I heard people complaining about only getting three choices at the end and about how they were lied to about there being X number of endings the first thought that came into my head was that despite the limited number of options you get to actually end the game, each different ending is going to be different from another person’s based on the actions they’ve made.
Did Tali kill Legion? Did you kill Wrex? Did Grunt die fighting those Ravagers? Did Mordin die curing the genophage?
Even if two players both chose the Destroy ending, all of those factors are different from their endings.
Honestly OP, were you not around for www.Halo2sucks.com?
Were you not around for H3 when the players that didn’t get more CE elements back and lost the Original Two button combos and there was outroar over that?
Were you not around for Halo: Reach and the cries of not listening from Bungie or 343i, even after 343i gave a TU and gametypes EXACTLY how there were demanded (and then played sparingly)?
I wasn’t a part of Mass Effect 3’s community but I know my Halo’s history and ME3’s “problem” is nothing like Halo’s cyclical events.
H4 has nothing on ME3’s controversy,You cant even compare the two.Different areas for one.I hate the Indoctrination Theory,Its Indoctrination within itself.People would look for proof from anything.