Agreed, there is an inventory upgrade you can get but a storage chest seems like it should of been something they had in from the start.
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On the other hand, apparently the only things that count as inventory are equipment, augments, and modifications, and at least for me I've done desert planet, jungle planet, and now going back to desert planet again to visit the huge open, not hugely radioactive area and I haven't found that much actual inventory.
It doesn't stop it being by far the most boring and tedious part, though. This is actually one area where MMOs like World of Warcraft have the right idea--if someone in the town has a quest for you there's a glowing exclamation mark above their head, and you don't need to speak to anyone else. I'm most definitely not suggesting that the sidequests in a single player RPG turn into WoW ones, mind you, just that they be easier to find!
That's actually in the game. It's small, and pale blue and white, though, so easier to miss, especially on the clean, white nexus. But if it was bigger, I think the grognards who complained and complained and got the inventory full of junk brought back would riot.
Ok, does anyone else think the bit where you meet the Archon and the Angaran's is extremely poorly done?
Like, really, really poorly?
Also, though a while later now, I really wish there was an option to tell Pheebe not to set up shop in front of the Escape pods. Nothing has come up about it yet, but seriously? And she hasn't offered much thus far... Thus far, SAM has in all ways more useful about Remnant stuff, at least Liara was a kinda useful prothean expert.
The bits of directed content they have is pretty impressive (if you force the post-processing BS off through console commands)...just wished they'd have spent more time on that content instead of trying to make "the biggest game evah!" ...Which is mostly empty and uninteresting.
Also, is there a way to get a minimap? The compass is utterly lacking.
Not to mention the menus were clearly designed by someone who has never played a video game before.
It's rushed as all hell. Oh, look it's the bad guy and he's locked out our controls and now we have them back and now we're running and things are blowing up and now we're where we wanted to be but there's people here and they don't understand us but now they do and now we're talking to their leader and he doesn't trust us but hey he gives us a guy and tells us to help his buddies in another system and they already know about us by the time we get there and they start playing the first contact thing for laughs instead of using it as the most interesting part of sci-fi.
Right? Not only is putting crap in there an obstruction hazard, if she decides to jump ship as soon as something goes wrong (which both her personality and note on the fire drill say she might do), that's a six(eight?)-man pod she just wasted and people might die as a result.Quote:
Also, though a while later now, I really wish there was an option to tell Pheebe not to set up shop in front of the Escape pods. Nothing has come up about it yet, but seriously? And she hasn't offered much thus far... Thus far, SAM has in all ways more useful about Remnant stuff, at least Liara was a kinda useful prothean expert.
My biggest annoyance so far has been during a side quest on Eos. You gotta investigate some colonists doing something stupid with the Remnant. I fought my way through the first monolith again, started listening to the recording that'd tell me what to do next. It got two lines in, and Liam interrupted (cancelling the dialogue for the quest) to tell me "There's another colonist to scan." So I opened the scanner, screwed around looking for the guy that, haha thanks so much Liam, I'd already scanned last time I'd been through, and finally noticed that the quest dialogue recording had started counting down a timer. So, slightly panicked, I looked at my compass instead of pausing, bringing up the journal, scrolling over to the map, and figuring out where the pointer was. It was in this direction, I figured it couldn't be far since the timer was so short, and started running.
It was on the other side of the Eos map.:smallannoyed: And yeah, I'd left the Nomad at the top of the cliff.
The point of interest SAM adds to your map when you scan the radio tells you exactly where those colonists are though. It's tagged with the name of the sidequest ("Shock Therapy") and the distance should tell you right away that you'll need the Nomad.
Nobody in Andromeda seems to understand the notion of 'air support'. I the Kett have dropships, which look like they've got guns on them, but they just tend to use 'em to drop squads right in range of an enemy squad. Mind, the Initiative's idea of tactics is apparently to land a giant spaceship on the ground, and leave everything up to about three people, two of whom are total idiots.
(The squad AI seems totally useless. I mean I guess they're handy to have alive, simply because they're another thing for the enemy to shoot at, but Republic Commando this ain't)
Distances don't show up on the compass though, only the direction. Distance can be guesstimated from the compass via parallax, but that's about it.
Played another couple hours last night, and my view of the game is improving. I finally got a graphics setting that 1) doesn't look like ass and 2) is playable, which helps. I also swapped out whatshisface the initial companion, who I found both boring and annoying for whatsherface the Turian - names are not my strong suit This make no discernible difference in combat because the AI is useless, but it sure improves the squad banter to the point where I don't wince anymore.
And tooling around Eos is actually a whole lot of fun! Stuff density feels just about right, locations aren't boringly close together, the map isn't overflowing with points of interest, and there's some amount of route planning to be done. Importantly, it feels like it gets the mix of combat, exploring stuff and talky/story bits about right. Weapon variety is fairly nice, and the shooting continues to feel solid. The writing is a lot less annoying too, in that I'm out doing things, rather than just standing around getting exposited at by people I don't know and don't care about.
I said map, not compass. Have you guys been playing without looking at it all this time? :smallconfused:
I couldn't fathom being in an open world game for more than a few seconds without one.
I dropped Cora for Vetra at the first opportunity. Vetra is actually great to have on Eos because she has history with Drack, so you get some special dialogue. She also has commentary around the failed settlements you come across, since she was here for all of that (and the uprising.)
It also helped that when I asked about what settlement to plop down
SpoilerBoth Liam and Vetra are the sunny optimists who said "For Science!" I assume Cora advocates for a military posture but I haven't actually checked.
The map is two levels of menu down, and at least on my computer takes a smidgen to load. I use it, but I'm not popping in all the time.
Which is kinda weird, since other games either have a minimap, make the map very quick to get to, or let you temporarily highlight objective locations in the world. You can easily play the entirety of Tomb Raider without ever looking at the map.
Ayup, I liked that bit.Quote:
I dropped Cora for Vetra at the first opportunity. Vetra is actually great to have on Eos because she has history with Drack, so you get some special dialogue. She also has commentary around the failed settlements you come across, since she was here for all of that (and the uprising.)
Not on the controller it isn't. Or if it is, the game hasn't told me - which is totally possible, because I've seldom encountered a game more hesitant to explain its controls.
And did anybody like Skyrim's UI? It's maybe better than Oblivion's, but that is a bar so low ants can look down at it.
My understanding of what folks hated about Skyrim's UI was the inventory and ability management. "Press M to see the map" is... a bit more reasonable an expectation for designers to have of gamers I think.
With this particular quest, it isn't a matter of whether the objective shows up on the map or not. It's a case of expecting the objective to be close and being fooled by the crappy compass.
If I'm given a short timer to go save someone, my first instinct isn't to look at the map and see exactly where it is - it's to hare off at top speed in the direction of the compass. Which is what I did. It's also strongly implied that the colonists you need to rescue are nearby, because you're scanning a bunch of their equipment they left on the ground. Add in the overriding of the dialogue and it removes all clues that you have to drive the other side of the map instead of finding the colonists just a short distance away from where they left their gear.
This game has one of the worst compasses I've seen in general. The Nexus ain't big, but I regularly can't follow the compass to tell where I need to go. A distance meter would help a lot. Pathfinding would be even better.
And yeah, it's a little thing. But there's a LOT of little things that cause it all to really add up. And bad UI design is just one of those unforgivable things because there are so many examples of how to do it right.
Edit:
Also, if Andromeda's inventory and skill management were any better than Skyrim's (in my opinion, they're WORSE), then you wouldn't be getting half as many complaints.
My instinct is to look exactly where I'm going, especially since opening the menu pauses the timer and gives me breathing room to plan. I fully acknowledge I may just play games differently though. In addition to Skyrim, I've played both Prototypes, GTA, numerous Assassin's Creed games and Dragon Age Inquisition itself, so checking the map periodically has become instinctive to me. (My first instinct in fact was to see if I could fast travel closer to where the colonists were, but the designers had anticipated someone trying that.)
That quest in question almost screwed me over too. I got the conversation starting for it then someone blabs about the body nearby that I had already scanned and it took me some digging through the journal to figure out what quest the timer was for exactly so I could look for its location on the map. Honestly the dialogue for any timed missions should have priority over all other dialogue and it should switch your quest tracker automatically to it so you know exactly what to look for on your map. If that's too much work to program in for any reason then they shouldn't do timed missions at all.
I did start running on foot for that quest, but then I thought about it and bringing the Nomad seemed like nothing to lose but everything to gain. Also icons on the compass get bigger/smaller based on distance, so there's at least that.
Personally what bugs me the most is there's this huge Kett base on Eos, with a shield the Nomad can't pass through. I assume there's a quest for it, but I haven't triggered it yet, and I've been blowing up generators in the northwest corner of the map that may or may not be related because apparently there's dialogue on the radio when you approach the base, that seems to have changed whenever I blow it up (I missed the dialogue each time I came through, though, due to everything else being louder).
Yea, I had to google how to change Armor and Squad Mates, I didn't see the tiny buttons up top. At the moment I'm going Jaal and Cora (He's really tough, she tends to screw with enemy groups). I leave all the combo management to me.
That sums up my main complaint about the whole open-world game style.
Actually, I'm seeing enough complaints out of people playing that game that sound like something I'd say about other open-world games that it's starting to worry me. If people who don't normally feel that way about these sorts of games are reacting like that to this one, I might well end up finding it worse than I'd expected when I get to it...
There is a quest for it, the map marker is in the NWish area of the map sort of between the two forward bases in that area. You talk to a guy who is related to a certain mass effect 2 companion and he gives you a series of targets culminating with the big shielded base. Alternatively you can just shoot your way in the front door of that base(at the top of the cliff) and do it on your own.
Honestly I think one of two things is factoring into their take on it. Either the people complaining are tired of open world games and just don't realize it, or they just like nitpicking because its Bioware and they aren't happy with how Bioware has changed over the years. It's probably the former and its something I personally went through with MMOs so I do understand it.
To me its open world areas are actually pretty good, they have about the right density of stuff to do imo so they don't feel too barren like Hissing Wastes in DAI or too cluttered like Farcry 4.
I'm not generally super-wild about open world games. The good parts of Andromeda I'm finding to a pretty good job of selling a sort of Captain Kirk space fantasy. You run around, shoot some baddies, investigate mysteries (read: point magic scanner at them), you'll probably get to sex up to some blue babes - although given the animation in this game, I find that prospect rather less than erotic. But I digress, the central hook of explore-improve-make suitable for habitation is appealing, in a way that I find a lot open world games fail at.
That said, there's definitely flies in the ointment. The presentation is rough, the menus are genuinely unpleasant, and in general I find myself hoping people stop talking quickly, because they're basically all trite, and not particularly smart sounding. It's like the writers are permanently set on pithy one-liner, and at this point I can't even tell half the time if it's my character talking or one of my companions. Which doesn't bother me, I'm not here for the writing, I'm here to drive around doing cool stuff.
My main issue with the open world stuff is that I just finished playing Horizon: Zero Dawn, and that game beats Andromeda comprehensively when it comes to open world design. I never lost the sense of discovery with Horizon, and have yet to gain it with Andromeda. A lot of my complaints boil down to that - having just played a game that got things right, it makes otherwise minor flaws really stand out.
It is still possible that I'm just badly influenced by Eos, and the other open world areas aren't as bad. I haven't played much the last couple days (due to the Harthstone championships being on, meaning I can't play anything requiring sound), but I'll be getting to additonal planets on Monday or so once I have time to play again.
What it's ultimately come down to thus far is that I long since got tired of open world games. Horizon made me love them again for the first time in years. Andromeda brings the same tired old problems back and hasn't wowed me sufficiently to take my mind off them. My favorite parts of the game thus far have been the non-open-world portions, and I maintain that the game would have been better if it had been done in the mold of ME2 and ME3. There's room for improvement there too, but what I've seen thus far I consider a step backwards.