Well, I enjoy them, and enjoyment is the point of me playing this game. If you like things like Minecraft or Terraria/Starbound/the building portions of Valheim, then you can find enjoyment in outpost construction. Otherwise, you might like it as a way to make resources or a way to store things and have a living space without resorting to a ship that you’re locked to because any other ship not made to accommodate all of your crap and need for workstations won’t do.

The pros are not purely creative, but that is a pro if you’re into that. Every game has parts that some people will like and others won’t like, just because you think sandbox elements have no point by definition doesn’t mean someone like me won’t enjoy noodling around in Garry’s Mod without any mechanical incentive. Exploring the mechanical space of a game and creating just to create can be fun. Not for everyone, but it can be in its own right.

It’s part of how you can gather materials more on demand or long term than hoping you loot some or going and buying them, and it’s about being able to make your own space to live in and feel like you made something neat.

I tried to make a ship to live out of with every crafting station and tons of cargo, but the ship just ended up massive and unwieldy to move around in.

I ended up creating a base with lots of organized storage and such so that I can now have whatever size and kind of ship I want, just for funsies, and I can leave all the storage and crafting shit at “home”.

I’m glad they let you gain materials and such in different ways, so if I really really wanted to, I could just bust my ass running missions and use my money to buy mats.

I’d really prefer being able to load into your ship interior during construction and marking ladder or door points that way, but having the ability to do it from the exterior view would be handy too. I’d assume the ability to move facilities within a hab would also be extremely useful so you didn’t have to choose between losing a workbench or putting a door where you want it.

It’s just difficult to imagine what it’s like walking through your ship and just how far it feels to walk certain distances.

I assume whatever wizardry is going on with the auto placement of ladders and doors gets much more complicated if you were allowed to flip them, but I agree, it really sucks being pretty heavily led to make long ass ships because making them wide is not as natural or means using multiple smaller habs instead

My best guess is that it’s a debris effect from your ship taking damage, and it’s supposed to fly away and expire, but somehow got stuck instead of disappearing, so now it’s an “effect” on your character that doesn’t know its supposed to have timed out already.

Other Bethesda games, especially Skyrim, had bugs like this of status effects that would get stuck on your character longer than they were supposed to and you’d only realize hours later when your character has some weird blue fog following them

Nintendo hire this man

For someone like me that was trying to maximize facilities in a minimum amount of ship sections I’d love for there to be more clear info out there

That’s sad news about the studio. I suppose some people forgot that the original Mass Effect had quite a few issues and it wasn’t until 2 that it got real good, and having that bar set at a payoff that was only possible through three games of narrative choices and carryover was impossible to hit for Andromeda.

It seems like it was cursed with “how the heck do you follow that up?” Syndrome. And sadly the facial animations seemed at the time to be the critical anchor that all the general issues surrounded and were exemplified by.

I hope in the future Bioware steps back from adding those “MMO side quest” style side content they began including for Inquisition, it did really change the feel of the whole game having those there.

Interesting to hear about the first act dragging, I actually think this is a problem echoed by Starfield, whose first 12 hours are confusing as you don’t understand where and how to access the different types of gameplay at will, and it’s too early on in your character’s development to be able to really fully engage and figure out the ship and outpost construction. By then the people who don’t have patience or weren’t interested in the game to begin with have likely already had their opinions begin to solidify.

I wonder if Bioware will try an Andromeda 2 down the line, I think that universe deserves another shot.

How do you feel about/have you played Andromeda? I love the ME trilogy, and I was a quarter through ME2 doing a trilogy replay as well, but then Starfield released. I’ll get back to it eventually though. I haven’t played Andromeda myself, but I feel like it couldn’t possibly be as terrible as the kickback it got on release.

Removed by mod

I think video games’ volatility and ties to specific hardware and issues of bugs and technical problems hold them back from being the best medium.

Almost all other kinds of art are much more easily preserved in their original form and have more longevity and deliverance of artistic intent.

Absolutely. There are a few studios I love so much that I know what they produce I’ll enjoy well enough to find it worth it, and so I’ll watch a gameplay trailer or two to get a baseline understanding of the type of game I should expect, and as soon as I’m satisfied by the premise, that’s it.

I wait for release and explore around the possibilities myself and wonder things, and test things, and get mad that I didn’t realize I could do a thing the whole time, but it’s really just an awesome way to experience a game.

Of course, this only works if I trust that the studio will put out a baseline of quality and expected type of gameplay. If a game is of questionable quality money becomes a larger issue than ideal experience.

Absolutely. A huge reason why soulslikes are so beloved. Through a huge combination of deliberate decisions touching nearly every facet of the game, an ethos is crafted all for the sake of intriguing the player, challenging the player’s mind and physical execution, and then triumphing, with discovery of several forms peppered throughout the way.

The lack of a map, enabled by a well designed and memorable world is one of the best examples for me. Nothing else I’ve played quite matches navigating Dark Souls without a map. You’re in one spot of this large, interconnected, seamless world. You just finished grinding an item in Darkroot Garden, and you want to return to Firelink.

Mentally, a collage of images appears in my mind, laying a pathway, a map of the world, the different paths and elevators I must take to get to where I need to go, and I begin walking, and I follow my own directions. That experience is all over the place in that game, and for all the obtuseness that’s in there, it was still so worth it to commit to that design so hard.

I didn’t say that understanding and agreement are the same. What I wanted was for that user to understand where the other side was coming from, and acknowledge that, and if they still had a different opinion, then okay, but I just wanted to try and explain the side I’m on in a less directly hostile way than the other commenters are.

You make some logical points, I won’t go into my opinion since it already seems clear, hope you have a nice night, genuinely, people should be able to discuss this stuff maturely.

Depends on if the character’s supposed to be a self insert. In a game with deep customization you may be trying to make yourself, and not playing as Lara Croft or Geralt, so being able to choose your pronouns helps immersion, and immersion’s a big deal to many players who’ll take it anywhere they can get it in a game, whether it’s pronouns, or being able to see your torso and feet when you look down.

I can understand that having pronouns or nonbinary or trans characters in games can be a bit of a culture shock. As a culture we’re beginning to grow more overall accepting of these people that have been here all along, but never felt comfortable to “be a seen part of society” out of fear. The same sort of thing happened, or is still happening, with homosexuality, though that’s further along the acceptance curve than trans/nonbinary.

Eventually it won’t be so obviously “woke garbage” that sticks out to you as something noticeable and startling, and it’ll be just another feature of the game like anything else, just another NPC like any other, but that one gets called “they” instead of him or her. It takes time for it all to become normalized and not be something you raise eyebrows at and feel upset by. You may always wonder sometimes what gender someone is identifying as when it may not be obvious, but it will become easier to simply ask them, or be okay with not knowing, it’s okay to not know.

I’m not going to pretend that mentally working through these things isn’t a part of this whole process, but trying to somehow fight back against it by calling it all garbage and refusing to extend the hand to understand where it’s all coming from is… inappropriate, we all need to get along, we all live on this planet together and the only way to make it the best it can be is to try and understand each other.

Sure, you may have a point in there about desiring a platform where people can upload any mod they like, and that could totally be a thing, Nexus Mods doesn’t want that to be their thing, specifically, and whether you’re okay with that or not is your perspective, and I’m okay with that, but you should try and understand why Nexus is taking that stance. Nonbinary and trans people are on the back foot, culturally, so it’s clear that many places will take a stand to hard defend their representation because they’re so far behind the “biological genders” and could use a helping hand.

That seems a little better, but seasonal content must be paid for, right? Does that mean the content I paid for that’s sunsetted id have to pay for again seasonally? And what about the campaign?

I had just never heard anyone speak about it, the premise and Japanese mythology already interest me, and it’s developed by Tango, the studio ran by Shinji Mikami, so I’m definitely interested to check it out (though I know he’s not directly involved, it lends a pedigree to their studio, to me.)

Oh shit, that actually sounds pretty cool, I was expecting some straight forward RPG by the name of it, I’ll definitely check it out. Thank you