Hardcore is what I usually do. I just want to make one Insanity playthrough once.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avilan the Grey
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Hardcore is what I usually do. I just want to make one Insanity playthrough once.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avilan the Grey
You know piercing weapons - including nearly every sniper rifle above Mantis - can punch right through that shield of his, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
It's useful for the derelict reaper (the Cain one-shots the core, even on Insanity, saving you a lot of headache) and for the Human Reaper (because Harbinger drops heavy ammo when killed.) Other than those I leave it at home.Quote:
Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye
I like to have it around. Just because it's such huge fun. :smallbiggrin:
Again: AP is KING in ME3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyren
Indeed, my favorite weapon for ME3 in both SP and MP was the Mattock with the Arpen and extended barrel mods. Didn't much matter what I was facing so long as my trigger finger wasn't acting up.
Agreed. In ME1 I could feel what it was like to be Commander Shepard, a captain in the shiny space future, exploring a universe far bigger than himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Derthric
I don't care how many extra romances they add, nothing compares to finding a long-mummafied Salarian on a random uninhabitable world, or an ancient, abandoned Asari camp with lost writings in it's vault. Not to mention things like Prothean ruins and the like.
ME2 refined the mechanics, but they ruined the atmosphere to do it.
Those boring things that just amounted to level-adjusted amounts of money and experience, which they inserted just so that there would be a tiny handful of rewards for trekking across the vast, mountainous empty space of the game's assorted otherwise-useless planets in a horrible vehicle? Those are among the last things I would ever miss about ME1. Give me anything in ME2 over that any day. Hell, I might prefer watching ME3's ending over collecting those, if only because it takes much less time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
Hey, it could have been better implimented, but the concept was pretty damn good and indicative of a whole lot of good ideas that got screwed over.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
And if you want to talk about badly implimented concepts, how about the invisible timer and followers in 2 being gated off. Legion actually lost like half his content over that.
Huh, sounds like my opinion of a lot of what's being lost from DA2 going into DAI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
But I don't actually agree with you that the concept is even good, personally. Though I am the guy for whom Bioware saying that the next game will bring back the Mako and have an exploration focus does far more to make me question whether I'll be picking it up than the ending of 3 did, so I imagine you're not overly surprised by that. I simply don't want exploration as a focus of a game like Mass Effect - when I want to do that, I'll go play Zelda or some other adventure game, not an RPG.
:smallconfused: Not actually sure what you're talking about. The only invisible timer I can think of is the kidnapped crew members dying if you do extra missions before going on the suicide mission, which I can't say bothers me in the slightest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
There are actually a bunch of invisible gates and timers in ME2 that stop you from getting your followers in the originally planned order, due to restrictions on the console if I remember right. Legion had been recorded, programmed, and animated as joining you several stages earlier, for example, before they sent him off to the ass end of the game. Other followers have that issue to varying degrees, but he's the most obvious example. The reaper IFF also has an invisible timer set to it so you can only do a set number of missions before it runs out and you have to lose your crew. Combined with your order for taking followers after the Omega-4 Relay and it means the whole game looks freeform on the surface, but it'll easily screw you over if you go off an unwritten script.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
If you play the base game and nothing else you'd probably never notice it. But if you get all the DLC then suddenly you have more events than the timer can handle unadjusted. Which only gets worse since Overlord and Shadowbroker take up about four spots each, while recruitment and loyalty missions are one each. So if you do one at the wrong moment whoops, suddenly half your squad is disloyal and the collectors are attacking!
Can't honestly say I think there's any problem with any of that. The only thing you can be "screwed over" on is losing a bunch of unnamed crew members and Kelly by not going immediately to the suicide mission after they're abducted, which I already mentioned I have no problem with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
It's the principal of the thing as much as the actual consequences.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
You aren't told this will happen, and it's not something Bioware advertised. Instead it's forced on you. Hell, it only gets worse if you show customer loyalty and buy yourself some DLC. If you want to start a new game and play the new missions first then you could very well have to take on the Omega-4 with no loyal squadmates whatsoever.
That's shoddy game design, plain and simple.
As long as finding those things is actually something you do, and it's not the same 3 identical containers (that just happen to have different codex entries) over and over that it took you 30 minutes to get to due to the frustrating terrain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
Hey! Let's not say things we can't take back!Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
I have to agree with Zevox on this one. They got kidnapped by the same people who have been orchestrating a mass extermination of the human race the entire game. My immediate thought following these events was "oh crap, I better hurry up and rescue them!" What did you think was going to happen if you didn't rescue them? Tea and crumpets?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
I can see how it might be frustrating if you go into the IFF too early and don't have your crew loyal yet...but after they're kidnapped I don't have a lot of sympathy if you chose to go deal with Jack's PTSD or something over rescuing your crew from the genocidal monsters.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that there are more hidden deadlines than there actually are. It's perfectly fine to do every mission in the game as long as you don't activate the IFF mission. They probably should have been more clear that this particular mission was going to create a point of no return, but forcing tough decisions on the player is supposed to be Mass Effect's whole thing. You can't really get mad at them for that.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. The IFF timer has nothing to do with the how many DLC missions you have, It only depends on when You do the the reaper mission itself; if I'm not mistaken, a day 1 player and a owner of all DLC could have the same problem or no problem at all; furthermore, I tried Overlord and I'm pretty sure It counts as One total mission, not as the 4 it really seems to be: I remember doing this right after the IFF mission and after Overlord I still had time to do Legion loyalty.. What changes with the DLC is Horizon; I heard that some people reported Horizon triggering before all 5 squadmates were taken (Never happened to me)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
See this excites me. I agree the Mako was the worst part of ME1 and its the reason I won't ever play it again. I tried before ME3 came out. Can't do it. But the narrative tone of 1 was so dramatically different from 2 and 3. At the time there was nothing else like it and at the moment there still isn't. I'd LOVE to play another "edge of the galaxy exploring the unknown and killing it" narrative.
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I can see how it might be frustrating if you go into the IFF too early and don't have your crew loyal yet.
This mind sound a little condescending of me and so I appologise in advance. But not guessing that doing the Reaper IFF triggers some kind of end-game sequence is probably a lack of genre savviness. Just like going through the MU relay in 1 and hunting down the Elusive Man in 3 trigger end games. Those had big red flags for me. Being shocked that those events trigger some kind of time-sensitive sequence doesn't makes sense to me.
You can play through ME1 without doing any of the side missions. The Mako parts on Therum, Feros, and Vermire are not so bad, and those on Noverria and Ilos are really easy.
Yeah, but the whole setting is "our handguns are basically miniature railguns which are all but impossible to armour against so everyone uses mass effect based shielding instead"Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyren
So this guy has a lump of metal and it's super effective against anything that doesn't have the armour piercing plugin.
Now, if the shields had been a projector for a heavy mass effect shield that would have been not only better lore, but could have interesting gameplay interactions like "you can use Overload to blow up the shield and possibly cause AoE damage".
But Mass Effect 3 had significantly less of those interesting gameplay interactions than Mass Effect 2 did. That was my point. The combats felt less interesting, the squad abilities felt less interesting to use because there were less unique interactions and there were less reasons to use them because "AP is king".
The Mako was the worst part of Mass Effect 1, but everything they replaced it with (Probing planets then scanning systems) was even worse.
I hated the ending with the white-cold fire of a thousand anti-suns on pretty much every level, but I will give them credit for the extended cut in that it at least polished the execution of it. It was still (in my opinion) a turd, but it was a turb polished to a golden sheen...Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Hall
Funnily enough, they did implement guys that carried mass effect shields in Citadel, with exactly that interaction - you could Overload to short out the shield. Can't remember whether they were strong against armor-piercing or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
Still, I did think that they greatly improved the combat for ME3, mainly due to the massive mistake they made in ME2: Shields/Armor totally negating powers and being the bulk of the health of every unit. It made powers pretty much useless.
My main criticism against Mass Effect 3 combat was enemy variety. The various mercenary groups in ME2 had different combat styles, and on top of that they had different unique units that would accompany them. Blood pack had Varren, Blue Sun loved their droids, etc. In addition there were outright unique boss enemies, mission-specific enemies like the wildlife on Tuchanka - a generally wide variety of stuff to fight.
In 3 though, they reduced it to Cerberus and Reapers. There were also, what...3 missions featuring the Geth? The Dreadnought, rescuing Koris, and Rannoch. And the Geth missions all came clumped together at once. So you get Cerberus mission followed by Reaper mission followed by Cerberus mission, endlessly throughout the whole game.
Make multiple factions, guys. Have the STG base be attacked by Salarian radicals that don't want the genophage to go out. Toss a fight with the Krogans in there. Make proper use of the shiny new combat system instead of restricting it to a bare handful of enemy types.
From my perspective, all it did was refocus combat on the powers that specifically interacted with those barriers. Shields don't totally negate powers, they call for you to use Overload or an SMG, armour doesn't totally negate powers, it calls for you to use warp/incinerate, barriers call for Warp or Warp ammo, etc. There were even cool interactions like Kasumi's flashbangs shutting down Harbinger when he assumed direct control, turning him basically back into a normal mook because they disabled enemy biotics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
In ME2 different weapons and powers have different purposes and intelligently choosing between them was a big part of success on higher difficulties. In ME3 all you needed was a Mattock and every problem was a nail.
I mean it. That's how much I dislike those portions of ME1.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
Again, I don't actually see any problem here. You have some sort of "principled" objection to inserting that sort of realistic consequence to an action, even when it doesn't actually affect much of anything that the typical player would care about? I'm afraid I don't follow the logic. Don't most players besides me profess to like this sort of thing in WRPGs, where your choices affect something in the story? How does this one become bad? Just because it wasn't heavily telegraphed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayngfet
I disagree. Planet scanning, while the one significant flaw with ME2, was still better than the Mako. And system scanning in 3, while still not something I'd call a good element, was even less of an issue for me than planet scanning. I'd take either of those again over the return of the Mako.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
I think they were resistant to but not immune to armor-piercing. I recall them from Omega taking less damage than I'd expected from my armor-piercing weapons shooting through the shields, making me prefer to Energy Drain them (my bonus power, being an Adept).Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
They weren't even a gameplay element though, they were "play a menu for ten minutes" The whole fuel on the galaxy map thing was the same, there was never any pressure in the system, so it was just busywork.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
Driving around in the Mako was at least a gameplay element, even if it was massively overdone and could have happily been restricted to happening a couple of times and planets with one significant base could have just had that base (and used the disc space for having variations on that base, how mad would that have been?).
Driving around in the Mako was a boring, clunky gameplay element that contributed nothing to my enjoyment of the game and took more time than the scanning mini-games. I'll take the boring, functional, shorter flaws that at least gave me resources to use on something useful over that, personally.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
They're both pretty bad. One gave the courtesy of at least being short. Personally, both should have been scrapped.
Or You can Pull their shield away. And then they regenerate it. Citadel enemies are really fun; they remind me the blue suns.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
The IFF sequence isn't nearly as telegraphed as those other examples. There may be hints, but no overt red flags the way the other games handle it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seatbelt
I dunno, I was so worried about acquiring the IFF in my first playthrough that I did it absolutely dead last. It was obvious that it was a major plot-advance point and in any game those are something to be very careful of.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
Personally, I kinda hate the "THIS IS THE POINT OF NO RETURN" in big flashing letters that many games have. I understand their importance, but it's an absolute killer to suspension of disbelief.
I did the same thing, but only because I expect those kind of shenanigans from a Mass Effect game. I think, without using meta knowledge that there's nothing that really singles that particular mission out as a point of no return any more than Horizon or the collector ship.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
So, something I noticed, is that planet scanning when I played on the PC was fast and pretty easy. I had ginormous amounts of materials. My friend who was playing on a console, though, had a horrible slog of slow scrolling and hated planet scanning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zevox
And I kinda like the Mako. The maps made it pretty clear what would be a good route (ascend to a given elevation and you can follow it pretty easily). And there's the occasional fun of finding the stuff that's not on the map.
My hatred is the quartermastery that you have to do through ME1. "Let's pixel-bitch our way across the galaxy on the backs of tons of pointless gear!"
I played on a console as well (Xbox 360), and I actually enjoyed the planet scanning and collecting of different resource materials. I will admit that the speed of it was a bit obnoxious until you got the upgrade that made it faster, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Hall
I think the thing I liked about it was that it felt realistic, like that's how you'd actually scan a planet from a spaceship in orbit.