This is a great point. All that money spent on making the in-game movies and tools required to create them might be quite wasteful. Imagine what other innovative features they could have implemented with that cash! Ah, well, at least they let us skip the movies if we want to.

I'd be surprised if there are any haters that fear the game. What an odd theory.

Some people dig story. If Bioware can keep a steady stream of high-quality story coming then those people will remain happy. If not, the transition from story play to non-story play will likely be difficult for them to accept. Me personally? I'm not into story in my games. In general, stories are pretty poorly delivered in games. I've rarely seen games where the in-game movies were good enough to enjoy watching. I skip them like crazy. If the movie has some nice looking ladies in it then I might watch it once. But, polygon ladies don't count. Other than that, most development effort should be spent on making replayable systems. The more you can get the players to generate the content, the better! In my opinion, of course.

With such a large team, Bioware has a lot of various specializations. Be sure of that. So, the programmers that can fix some of the game breaking problems you see may not be available (due to vacation or otherwise). Or they might be busy with issues that you're not aware of. I'm sure they'll get to them all in due time. Although, I do agree that releasing a patch that fixes irrelevant issues is almost a slap in the face. But, it's not on purpose.

Don't you just love cute posts like this? He stopped right where the guy says he didn't rush. Snob much?

Precisely the kind of attitude that makes this community less than it could be.

I can't speak for that guy, but I know I don't listen to any storyline cutscene in any game. Skyrim? Turn on subtitles and blaze through it. I use that example because it's the latest game where I've been inundated with poor quality cutscenes that I couldn't care less about. In general, game movies are just poor movies. I watch real movies for video entertainment. Games are just bad at it. It's a snooze fest.

I smack the spacebar like a rat trying to get a pellet. I find the acting to be pretty poor and don't really get attached to any video game character. Maybe one day movies in games will be good enough to captivate me, but that's a long way off!

And? How does that apply to this thread?

Okay, interesting. I am a native English speaker. Allow me to tell you that cutscenes in games are perfectly okay to be called movies. If it makes you more comfortable, call it a cutscene or video. Call it a canned animation. It really doesn't matter. Movie doesn't mean film. If you go to the "movies" these days, many of the "films" are delivered digitally. I don't ask my friends, hey do you want to go see a projection of a digital video. I say, let's go see a movie! No film need be involved. The first line of the link you provided says: See how they are sometimes called in-game movies? It still doesn't change the fact that when folks are watching the cutscenes that they cannot be socialized with. It feels very strange to me to see folks standing around with a chat bubble next to their heads and being unable to talk with them whatsoever. That's just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary. As for your comment that I don't have much experience with computer games... nothing could be further from the truth. I've been professionally developing computer games for 20 years. I've been playing them longer still. Lots of experience.

They are movies, though. Ever see a DVD where you can choose different outcomes at predetermined times? Sure! It's still a movie. The impact that UI design has on a game can be very subtle. This is why companies spend so much money to focus test and design their UIs carefully. To a casual observer this small point may seem trivial and unimportant. Yet, it may well make a tremendous difference in how folks approach the game. Tiny things can actually make a big difference in my experience.

So many assumptions. I didn't say that no one can see it. I said that it's a bad location because you're not generally looking in the upper-left of the screen. This is precisely why many games put the chat window in the lower left of the screen. Why not put the action buttons in the upper right? Because that's a terrible placement. You wouldn't want to be looking up there to see cooldowns / etc. They rightly put the action buttons in the bottom middle because that's where you're looking most of the time... the middle of the screen. The user need only glance down a small amount to see the action buttons. Nothing is missed. Again, this is why many games put their chat in the lower left corner of the screen. I want the DEFAULT configuration of the UI to be well thought out and as functional as possible. An upper-left chat window is not that in my opinion. Putting the chat in the middle of the screen is demonstrably NOT the best position. Why? You know why. Folks don't want to cover the main gameplay area with chat. Nice try though.

That's my observation. People don't pay attention to it as much as they do in other games that I've played. Some of that is because people ignore it, some of it is because they're busy watching movies and some of it is because they simply don't notice it. Look at this post from someone else on this thread: I'm not the only one seeing this problem. Does it mean that everyone sees it? No. My theory is that this problem (and it is a problem) could be improved by making the default chat window location near where the action is. There's a reason that many games put the chat window in the lower left. Because it's near the action. Your eyes are already focused in that general area of the screen... looking at the action buttons, etc. This is precisely why the DEFAULT location is in the lower left in many games. I'm not insisting that this is a problem for everyone. I'm insisting that it is a problem though, and is poor design. A simple change to the DEFAULT placement would very likely improve things.

Can you point out where I'm insisting that everyone doesn't like this? Thought so.

Sorry you're annoyed. You clearly fall into the "try harder" camp. This is the first MMO where I literally tried to get a group going for an hour with no luck. Spamming general, setting my LFG comment, yelling near the area and asking players in-person in a nearby social hub. There was no response. I have been in cases where I've had to wait to complete a larger group. That's perfectly acceptable. But I've literally never seen this situation where I couldn't find a single group mate in an hour of searching. I'm glad you've found a social group in the game and have no problems getting groups going. I know I'm having the problem. I see from posts that others are too. Why is that happening? How many hours should I spend to meet your requirement of "trying harder?"