So Bioware are officially closing down their forums

http://blog.bioware.com/2016/07/29/concerning-our-forums/

This doesn't look like a good sign for the company.

The stuff we'll be missing out on.

As long as Mass Effect continues, I don't care about their forums.

Damn, now where will I go to see trol.......

Oh yeah, this place.

Bioware fans on that forum were completely nuts, will be sad to lose that entertainment value. As freedom freak's example shows.

@freedomfreak said:

The stuff we'll be missing out on.

Oh boy I remember that.

Then of course there was the Stanley woo (ding dong bannu) fiasco.

Bioware's forum was a nightmare when they were banning folks after that ME3 ending fiasco.

What do they post in Bioware fan forums ? I imagine only two people go there, people who still bitch about Mass Effect 3's endings, and people who write Bioware "fanfiction" like...

Wrex was in Krogan heat, and when Krogan are in heat even a Turian's hind-end would suffice, at least for the Krogan. And on this particular day, Garus was on hands and knees working maintenance on the Normandy's main cannon. To a Krogan, the object of one's desires is even more alluring when it could handle a weapon, and the Normandy's main cannon could punch a hole through an Asari cruiser. As Wrex walked into the cannon deck to see Garus in such a vulnerable position, he became so engorged he tore through his space suit. It's worth noting that many a Krogan die in the middle of vacuum combat this way until Salarian scientists engineered a drug to suppress the Krogan sex drive with minimal impact on combat effectiveness. Those crafty Salarians. Back to the matter at hand. Wrex lets out a blood curdling battle cry and charges at Garus. Garus stands up, turns around, and freezes like an Elcor in headlights. The Turian didn't stand a chance. Of course everybody in the ship heard and came to investigate the bloodbath, to find Wrex sitting on top of Garus's corpse (or what was left of it), smoking a fat stogie, which in Wrex's fingers looked like a Virginia Slim. Everybody just stared in slack jawed disbelief and didn't say a thing. Not even Commander Shepard knew what to say. The silence was broken when Joker came hobbling through the crowd to say "Damn Wrex, and here I thought Turians looked bad on the outside."

Yeah, I bet it's some sick shit like that. Who reads that stuff?

@lamprey263: there is people...

Yeah I didn't like going there just some really odd shit at times.

I read as bioware company closing down until i read forums. lol

beside nothing of value would be lost if they stop making mediocre games (like mass effect and dragon age)

@ghosts4ever: **scoffs** Mass Effect, mediocre? Now with Dragon Age I agree and then some; but still, Mass Effect? Harsh. You're cold as ice =P

Meh... I only ever went there if I had questions on their games. Never frequented it for anything else or to "hang out".

I heard it was the mos Eisley spaceport of forums though.

@lamprey263: mass effect absolutely suck. It's gears of war with few RPG elements. Except it's shallow shooter and non existence RPG. Never understood what it tried to be. RPG or shooter.

@lamprey263: pahahahahahaa. Much entertain, you should consider turning it into a novel.

@ghosts4ever: the series was clearly becoming an action RPG, and Gears of War was a great game too, the game was an RPG in important ways like choices on story and relationships with characters, great writing, rich universe, I'll take strong mechanics and streamlined gameplay over generic RPGs with crap roshambo gameplay, bad story, tedious focus on stats via equipment load and complex skill trees, plus the game had amazing production values

I can certainly see how it's just not somebody's thing, but I hardly feel it warrants being deemed mediocre

They should shut down their development studios next.

+100xp

That's too bad it's kind of weird not having official forums for a game, it's the place where you can usually find the more interesting discussions. Come to think of it though, I would rarely visit them because it's mostly a story driven series and I usually visit forums to read about strategies. Wonder if this is due to the craziness that came about from the ME3 ending fiasco. I'm sure there will be other fan sites that will gain popularity because of this, so will just go there for that no big deal.

All I know is I can't wait to sink my VG teeth into ME:A !! The first this gen Mass Effect, Mako included, this gon b gud :D

Wow guess bioware is dying or something who does that? who closes a forum for your own fans? Look at how active this place is on system wars this place will always be here just chillin.

Prepare for all the weirdo romancers invading other communities now.

Good riddance.

Bioware needs to shut their fanbase out. They are ruining their games.

DAI was one big response to fans and it sucks.

They're a poor company who have abysmal customer support.

The problem is that they do so much pandering in their games that people come on to say things and because they're of a certain kind of person no one there can defend their actions.

So now Bioware is just going to spit out whatever pandering trash they can and never have to answer for it, though they never really did before.

No, they are a sometimes great company with abysmal idiotic fans.

And no, they get the most shit when they do not pander, so this leads to them pandering.

It it wasn't for the dumb fanbase, they wouldn't pander.

I disagree.

If their studios shut down, where would the employed go? Would you really want to risk the possibility of David Gaider working for Larian or Obsidian? BioWare has a pretty important role in the gaming industry, and that is to serve as a quarantine, a containment of terrible ideas and game developers.

David Gaider is with Beamdog, He is back on Baldur's Gate

Hopefully to some other shitty AAA RPG devs like Bethesda. You could have the worst of both worlds.

....good point though

this^ Mass Effect is still one of the best series. Mass effect 2 has a top 5 SP campaign and ME3 had a great horde mode and was overall a great game, even if people hated on the ending too much.

Mass Effect 2 is part of the problem. Its campaign was very flawed, especially the main quest. ME3 fixed a lot of the problems in ME2 and too more storytelling risks.

Blizzard forums still exist. :D

I think ME2 had the best overall campaign personally, The RPG elements were tuned way down though. 1 had too much of it, and 3 had it just right. Planet scanning was a terrible idea though

What exactly was good about Mass Effect 2's SP campaign?

All I remember of it was the copy paste encounters, godawful level design, little interactivity, boring encounter design, dismal exploration and poor enemy variety. Maybe there was something I missed. People keep hyping it up as good. But all I saw was trash.

Probably got tired of having to reply to thousands of messages about why there still isn't a remastered Mass Effect collection. One of the few collections that actually should be made.

Maybe you did miss something then? Encounter designs were quite varied with plenty of enemy types. Not to mention the fact you can build a character to your playstyle, You can be a sniper, and biotic melee character, or anything in between. Level design was good. There was plenty of planets to explore (except the aweful planet scanning that got patched to be less awful but still was dumb) There was plenty of weapon and power variety. A rock/paper/scissors effect (energy tech was good against shields, biotics were good against health and armor, Fire tech was good against armor) and picking different teammates allowed you to combo powers (Although ME3 did it best) Recruiting your team, building up your ship and characters all leading to the last battle. The suicide mission was pretty dam amazing. easily a top 3 mission in gaming. Your actions decided who lived and died and shepard is just a bad ass in many ways. The ME2 campaign blows pretty much every other campaign out of the water outside of a handful of games at best. There really wasn't much downtime as you flew from planet to planet recruiting. and some really good moments like finding legion, saving jack, curing or not curing the genophage etc etc. No game recently has come close to accomplishing what ME2 did. What campaigns do you consider to be really good?

The same old enemies with assault rifles wasnt exactly compelling encounter design to me. Linear levels with conveniently placed chest high walls wasnt exactly compelling encounter design. None of the level design I found, really lent itself well to compelling tactical scenarios. The weapon variety was questionable, and felt flat on its face compared to many older shooters. Some of the heavy weapons were interesting perhaps. But generally, everything was just the same old mundane weapons. Compare this to something like Serious Sam, which had a lot of standout weapons. Teammates felt largely inconsequential, and really only served as what I like to call, skillbots. You brought them along, so you could use their cooldowns.

Now for good RECENT campaigns. Will only say recent, because Doom and Heretic (thanks for the gift @Whiteblade999) are the shit.

Shooter

1. Kid Icarus Uprising: Exceptional Enemy variety, with roughly 25 bosses, and 100 different grunts. Excellent sense of humor written by an actual comedian. Difficulty settings which flat out changes the encounter design on higher difficulty levels and unlocks new paths, greatly expanding the replay value. Plenty of set pieces to change things up. Dozens of powers which are much more greatly varied than those in Mass Effect 2. Hidden secrets here and there would encourage and reward exploration. The rewards system rewards skill.
2. STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl: Tense and challenging gunfights. Superbly strong atmosphere. Better than average AI (Definately better than the godawful ME2 AI which lined up to die). Unscripted events makes the game unpredictable and strengthens replay value.
3. Crysis 1: Excellent sandbox FPS. Whose suit allows for radically different playstyles. Plenty of potential for emergent gameplay too. With players able to tilt the game to their favor. Rather than having the scene set up for the player, the player himself, can set up the scens for themselves.
4. Doom 4: The Super Shotgun carried the game. But hey, 7 secrets per level wasnt too bad. Blegh, have my standards for FPS been dragged so low I would be willing to consider this campaign really good? It was good for sure. I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed ME2, a game so dull I gave up on it 3 times.

RPG

1. Fire Emblem: Conquest: The encounter design was great, the mission design was great, the pacing was amazing, the level design lended itself extremely well for tactical scenarios. The game rewarded skill by providing incentives to the player for completing missions fast. All while outright punishing any player mistakes royally (unless you play on the appropriately named casual mode). Weapons would come with varying effects instead of being statistical upgrades (say a sword or an axe which deals purely magic damage). Tough but fair, anytime I failed, I never blamed the RNG. I failed because I made a mistake and paid dearly for it.
2. Divinity: Original Sin: Dat combat system is arguably one of the best in RPGs period. Being able to create more than one character was a breath of fresh air. Excellent skill design made it fun to choose which skills to pick. Some excellent encounters here and there, especially if you play on Tactician Mode. Great fun with a friend. Decent ammount of world interactivity, which allows you to set up the battlefield on your own terms.
3. Underrail: Challenging game which offers a lot of build variety. Excellent character system coupled with quest and scenario design that supports this character system really well. Fiarly well polished battle system which is surprisingly well balanced and allows for a variety of approaches. The scenario design too supports plenty of approaches as well. Emphasising the roleplaying bit of the RPG. This game rewards preparation, allowing players to set up traps, and a high level of difficulty means the player is actually encouraged to use the game's mechanics. The oddities mechanic was well implemented, and made non violent approaches just as viable as vioelnt ones.

Memories of TORtanic.

I remember being on there discussing the Indoctrination Theory. Man were those interesting times!

And nothing of value was lost.

Came here to say this.

I know of quite a few places that have closed down their forums for different forms of communication, via social places like Facebook, Reddit, Disqus...places with single sign-ons. Forums are becoming less and less relevant sadly. They are going the way of NNTP.

Good, surprised it took this long.

Those boards were..........weird.

Lots of entertainment though.

Cant remember the last time i actually went there for information

10/10. Would read again.

Pussies.

You do realize that ME has like over 50 weapons right? How is that not variety enough? But lets compare to what you picked (and not crapping on your opinion, you can like what you like but)

1) Kid Icarus Uprising - (never played) (from wikipedia) "Each chapter begins with an aerial battle, consisting of a five-minute on rails shooter segment, with Pit being guided along a pre-determined path. During these stages, the player moves Pit with the Circle Pad, aims with either the 3DS stylus or face buttons, and fires with the L Button. Not firing for a time allows the player to fire a powerful Charge Shot, which kills several enemies at once. Once on the ground, players have more control over Pit as he traverses through the level: Pit can either shoot enemies from a distance or attack them up close with melee attacks, while also performing various moves to dodge enemy attacks" That doesn't sound like variety to me. It's also a mobile game that's only 3 hours long, and form what I can tell, just the 1 weapon?

2) Stalker - one of the few on your list I played. a solid game, but nothing stand out. Sure the ME2 AI isn't exactly smart at all, but neither is the AI in 95% of games. Maybe Halo is the only game I can think of where i has AI that's actually smart. Especially Halo 5. I won't argue with you here cause stalker was a pretty good campaign.

3) Crysis 1 - Another one I played, but lets be honest. Crysis was so overrated because the graphics were downright amazing. The game itself was not very good. Weapon variety was good and you had options to be stealthy or lethal much like a lot of other games

4) Doom - another one I played. Great game for sure, but it's hardly variety. Map design is great for sure, but weapon variety is lacking. Most of it is bunny hopping around with a shotgun for me. Still IDK what character type you chose in ME2, but maybe you just didn't find the one you liked. Doom lacks a bunch more then ME2 did.

When looking at these 4, The variety isn't even close. I mean you can beat ME2's whole campaign without ever firing a gun until the last boss. Or you can go in guns blazing with a large array of weapon choices

Then you have your bottom half

1) Fire Emblem - (never played) Mobile turn based game, Sorry but it doesn't get more bland then that. Since the gameplay is picking options from a menu

2) Divinity Original Sin (never played) - but another turn based game. Turn based is about as bland as you can get nowadays as far as combat goes

3) Underrail (never played) and a 3rd turn based game lol Really not much more to say

Not crapping on your opinion, but it seems that you just prefer the slower paced turn based RPGs to the Action RPG style of ME2, which is fine. But I don't see how that poses better variety. Not many games allow you to play so many different styles as mass effect, and none of the one's listed do at all

I am not very interested in slight variations. If we did, we could assume that Kid Icarus Uprising had thousands of weapons? Instead of a more conservative 9: Staves, Blades, Arms, Bows, Cannons, Claws, Clubs, Orbitars, Palms.

1. 3 Hours long? Kid Icarus Uprising is roughly 12 hours long. Try to actually look up sites like How Long to beat next time. The fact is, the game gets plenty of variety by introducing new mechanics, new enemy types, new situations on you constantly. The mere placement of an Orne is enough to change how the entire battle plays out. Bosses, minibosses, hidden treasure rooms and all that jazz. Further keeps things fresh. 9 weapon classes, with 12 additional versions on each weapon class, 61 spells (most spells come with 4 additional ranks, leading to a total of 208)

2. Ever played FEAR 1?

3. No the game was not amazing because of the graphics. The graphics was the standout, but the true strength of the game was how interactive the world was. It was a true sandbox experience.

4. Lol. Doom 4 got its variety through its level design. Sure the general game was bunny hopping or in my case circle strafing, but once again, they frequently introduced new enemies to the game. Even then, bunnyhopping and circlestrafing allows for a HELL lot more variety than popping heads as they pop up. A cacodemon, was not like an imp. And the difference in the arena design, changed how you navigated the maps. What pickups there were lying around too had an impact on each arena. Far greater than shooting or blasting heads when they pop up that was the typical ME2 experience.

Lol... you clearly havent played them, let alone. You probably spent more time writing those posts than actually researching the games. You dont pick options from a menu in Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem Primarily involves posiitoning and countering the enemy.

Gameplay begins in 4:46. Doesnt look menu based to me at all.

And likewise, none of the other 2 RPGs I listed involve menu based combat.

And are you seriously kidding me. Divinity: Original Sin, Underrail, Kid Icarus Uprising all completely dwarf ME2 in playstyles.

Divinity: Original Sin, lets you entirely create your own team composition, want to go with 4 warriors? Go ahead, Wnat to go with a balnaced party, that is fine too. Problems, can frequently be solved in multiple ways. And the same goes for Underrail. Which absolutely dwarf any BioWare or Bethesda games in the ammount of player options. In Mass Effect 2, you are a soldier. In Underrail, you could be a scientist or a thief. And that will do a lot more than just determine what spells you have access to in combat.

I'm sorry but that combat loks bland. a bunch of 1 hit battle over next battle. Not your best example hopefully. If all you did was wait for heads to pop up and shoot in ME2, then you weren't playing to it's full potential. As I stated play a vanguard and biotic charge around the map never using your guns. There were tons of ways to play ME2

they won't be missed

despite my name i no longer care about the mass effect series

i am also done bitching about ME3 and it's ending.It's a waste

You are missing the most important part of the game. The whole bit of strategizing, planning and adapting. The enemies died in one hit because the player was using magic attacks, and those guys were weak against magic. Some of the player characters too, will die in a single hit or fight. And it is that very element which makes it so that Fire Emblem isnt about face-tanking like many other games are. You plan your moves as if every enemy move is potentially lethal, especially in later chapters. That is what Fire Emblem is about. As someone who has played both games, I can assure you FE:Fates has a higher skill ceiling than ME2. In that single encounter, the game would throw around 3-4 curveballs at you that would constantly keep you on your toes. And even on the lowest difficulty, some people found that mission too hard, and that was only mission 10. While others like me, played through it on Lunatic, had some issues, but ultimately persevered. And damn I felt like a general when I cleared that one mission.

I played Mass Effect 2 as one of the "mages". And the spells were dull as hell. Boring to use. It being a shooter is no excuse. Here are some of the spells in Kid Icarus Uprising,

• Reflect barrier: Conjures a barrier to reflect projectiles your way.
• Slip Shot: Shoot through walls.
• Power Thief: Imbue your melee attacks to give them a chance to steal your enemy's unused spell charges.
• Trade-Off: Set your HP to 1, boost your damage and make yourself invincible. The more HP you had before casting this spell, the more potent the spell is.
• Double Item: Double the effect or get an extra copy of any item you pick up.

What were the 5 spells vanguard got?

1. Cryo shot: Occationally freeze enemies when shooting them. Buff that doesnt really change how combat unfolds.
2. Incendiary Ammo: Occationally burn enemies when shooting them. Buff that doesnt really provide any new ways for combat to unfold.
3. Charge: Probably the only fun spell in the vanguard skillset.
4. Shockwave: Damage and knockback. Fire and forget.
5. Pull: CC. Pretty much fire and forget.

Great, only 1 fun spell to use. Combine that with unsatisfying gunplay, and you got the recipe for shitty gameplay right there.

Mass Effect 2 was terrible gameplaywise. Combat was inferior to any shooter, the roleplaying was inferior to any cRPG, the game was tactically shallow, the plot was dismal, and the writing was all over the place, the pacing was horrendous. The only hting that game had going for it was the characters, and that was IT. The game was a piece of trash. The playstyle variety was dismal too for RPGs. You are either a spellcaster, a gunner, or some kind of hybrid of both. And even that, primarily effects the nature of your projectiles more than anything. Compare this to divnity where a mage would utterly dominate the battlefield by essentially terraforming, blocking access, summon, disable and so much more.

....aaaannnndddd nothing of value was lost :)

Sorry. Not sorry.

They're going to pander, they're going to pander to all new heights.

Instead of the forums which at least had some sort of accountability they're going to go on social media and search for moronic terms like "feminism" and "black lives matter" and they're going to pander to a whole new level.

This is just another bad Bioware decision that will weaken them like they have been the last decade.