Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

[Math_Mage]

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.

I dunno, the game spent a lot of text telling you not to do the IFF mission until you were ready to do endgame sequences. That's practically Jacob's raison d'etre.

[Xondoure]

Yeah there are actually several warnings that you should only do IFF when you're absolutely prepared to. A lot of things caught me off guard in mass effect, but that wasn't one of them.

[Psyren]

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"

So this guy has a lump of metal and it's super effective against anything that doesn't have the armour piercing plugin.

It's not just a "lump of metal" any more than the armor is. The armor does have ME fields weaved throughout, presumably the shields do too (and moreso, since they don't have to be articulated.)

Or You can Pull their shield away. And then they regenerate it. Citadel enemies are really fun; they remind me the blue suns.

Throw/Charge also knock it aside - the window is brief, but more than long enough to pump a few slugs into them.

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!"

Indeed, the inventory in ME1 was horrible. This is one of my biggest fears for DAI.

Yeah there are actually several warnings that you should only do IFF when you're absolutely prepared to. A lot of things caught me off guard in mass effect, but that wasn't one of them.

They also reward you in a way. Yeah you risk losing the crew, but you get to take Legion with you more places.

[Math_Mage]

They also reward you in a way. Yeah you risk losing the crew, but you get to take Legion with you more places.

To call that a reward dilutes the term to the point of meaninglessness--having a teammate along is core gameplay. None of your other teammates require you to sacrifice outcomes to have them along on missions, even disregarding the parts you can only access by hacking.

[Psyren]

As I have to remind you every time you bring up "diluting terms to meaninglessness" - just because something is meaningless to you does not make it universally or objectively so.

[LibraryOgre]

Indeed, the inventory in ME1 was horrible. This is one of my biggest fears for DAI.

Really, quartermastery is my least favorite part of games. I can understand something like ME2, where there's a set of weapons, and you can get, like, one upgrade per weapon... something just beyond what the normal weapon is capable of. But ME1 has almost 20 different manufacturers, most of whom have 10 different versions of each of the 4 types of gun, and a slew of variations on Omni-tools and Bio-amps (to say nothing of all the add-ons... barrels, ammo, armor upgrades).

It's neat to get an upgrade. It's annoying to have to upgrade, constantly, just to keep in the game.

[Psyren]

Agreed... but there should be some form of progression though. I guess one could argue that the class tree provides enough of that. Personally I think ME3 did upgrades best, minus having to find certain weapon mods out in the field or else they're lost forever. I would have liked any that I missed to show up in the stores for a premium, just so I don't feel like I have to play with a walkthrough open on my lap so I don't miss the pistol power amplifier or whatever.

But as far as upgrading the weapons themselves they did a great job. You can max out your favorite gun right away, or spread the love between a couple that you're evaluating. And you can stick with that gun for the whole game if you want to, or just until you find one with better base stats and get the money to upgrade that.

I just wish the mix-and-match armor pieces mattered more than the all-in-one sets.

[Anteros]

Agreed... but there should be some form of progression though. I guess one could argue that the class tree provides enough of that. Personally I think ME3 did upgrades best, minus having to find certain weapon mods out in the field or else they're lost forever. I would have liked any that I missed to show up in the stores for a premium, just so I don't feel like I have to play with a walkthrough open on my lap so I don't miss the pistol power amplifier or whatever.

But as far as upgrading the weapons themselves they did a great job. You can max out your favorite gun right away, or spread the love between a couple that you're evaluating. And you can stick with that gun for the whole game if you want to, or just until you find one with better base stats and get the money to upgrade that.

I just wish the mix-and-match armor pieces mattered more than the all-in-one sets.

I got way more mileage out of mixing and matching. The sets might give more raw stats, but they're rarely as useful as being able to tailor your stats to your playstyle.

[Psyren]

I got way more mileage out of mixing and matching. The sets might give more raw stats, but they're rarely as useful as being able to tailor your stats to your playstyle.

That's the thing though, I would have expected the more complex option to have the higher ceiling (more raw stats.) But if what you're looking for is satisfied by one of the boilerplate sets you have no incentive to experiment. It's somewhat shoddy design in my opinion.

(Not that gear makes or breaks you in ME3 but still.)

[Derthric]

Agreed... but there should be some form of progression though. I guess one could argue that the class tree provides enough of that. Personally I think ME3 did upgrades best, minus having to find certain weapon mods out in the field or else they're lost forever. I would have liked any that I missed to show up in the stores for a premium, just so I don't feel like I have to play with a walkthrough open on my lap so I don't miss the pistol power amplifier or whatever.

But as far as upgrading the weapons themselves they did a great job. You can max out your favorite gun right away, or spread the love between a couple that you're evaluating. And you can stick with that gun for the whole game if you want to, or just until you find one with better base stats and get the money to upgrade that.

I just wish the mix-and-match armor pieces mattered more than the all-in-one sets.

I could have sworn anything you missed was added to stores. I know retrieval items you might have missed end up in the spectre store.

But otherwise I agree that ME3's inventory style was probably my favorite from the entire series. ME1 there was really just too much and so much of it was junk. And I really disliked ME2's very limited options, now they were good in that each gun of each class functioned differently but just having two choices.

My only wish would be the customization of the appearance be separate from the mods. Some mods just were not visually appealing but felt needed on the weapons.

And on that note, I want to put 40 inch chrome spinners on my Mako. Bioware make it happen.

[Jayngfet]

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)

I think you've all mistaken what I'm saying.

The IFF and attack have one timer to see how many of your crew members live, obviously.

What they don't show you though is the timer BEFORE that. You can't see it or even find indication it exists unless you either crack open your game or use a save editor that registers it. It registers anything that triggers a mission end screen as one count, and Overlord has four counts, so it counts as much as doing four other missions due to it's size and the way it's organized. Shadow Broker also counts as at least two.

Again, the player isn't given any indication of this, just like they aren't given indication that there's a bunch of cut content that was finished, polished, and implemented that they don't have access to without modifying the game somehow, but it's all still there. One you check the actual mechanical workings of ME2 it's actually a really slapdash product that relies on a whole bunch of arbitrary counters and ratios and gated events just to be capable of functioning. Mainly because Bioware got way too ambitious with a number of things, and it kinda bit them in the ass hard.

[Math_Mage]

As I have to remind you every time you bring up "diluting terms to meaninglessness" - just because something is meaningless to you does not make it universally or objectively so.

That's not a response to the argument, it's a retreat to subjectivity with respect to the claim the argument supports. What, exactly, is rewarding about being 'rewarded' for taking Legion on more missions with...having Legion on more missions? What isn't a reward in that sense? It's exactly the same choice you make with any other teammate...except you also lose your crew.

I think you've all mistaken what I'm saying.

The IFF and attack have one timer to see how many of your crew members live, obviously.

What they don't show you though is the timer BEFORE that. You can't see it or even find indication it exists unless you either crack open your game or use a save editor that registers it. It registers anything that triggers a mission end screen as one count, and Overlord has four counts, so it counts as much as doing four other missions due to it's size and the way it's organized. Shadow Broker also counts as at least two.

Again, the player isn't given any indication of this, just like they aren't given indication that there's a bunch of cut content that was finished, polished, and implemented that they don't have access to without modifying the game somehow, but it's all still there. One you check the actual mechanical workings of ME2 it's actually a really slapdash product that relies on a whole bunch of arbitrary counters and ratios and gated events just to be capable of functioning. Mainly because Bioware got way too ambitious with a number of things, and it kinda bit them in the ass hard.

The timer for...Horizon? The Collector ship? You can do as many missions as you like before the IFF mission.

[Psyren]

That's not a response to the argument, it's a retreat to subjectivity with respect to the claim the argument supports.

There's no "retreat." Meaningfulness is subjective.

What, exactly, is rewarding about being 'rewarded' for taking Legion on more missions with...having Legion on more missions? What isn't a reward in that sense? It's exactly the same choice you make with any other teammate...except you also lose your crew.

There's no way (short of hacking) to bring Legion on more than ~2 missions without the crew getting attacked. And this is where the subjectivity comes into play - some folks consider his dialogue/perspective unique enough to make that a good tradeoff, even if they ultimately end up replaying or reloading to save the crew for their "canon" playthrough.

I could have sworn anything you missed was added to stores. I know retrieval items you might have missed end up in the spectre store.

But otherwise I agree that ME3's inventory style was probably my favorite from the entire series. ME1 there was really just too much and so much of it was junk. And I really disliked ME2's very limited options, now they were good in that each gun of each class functioned differently but just having two choices.

My only wish would be the customization of the appearance be separate from the mods. Some mods just were not visually appealing but felt needed on the weapons.

And on that note, I want to put 40 inch chrome spinners on my Mako. Bioware make it happen.

I believe guns are but I can't recall if mods and armor pieces are. (e.g. if you miss the Securitel Visor and wanted that look for your Shepard...)

[Jayngfet]

The timer for...Horizon? The Collector ship? You can do as many missions as you like before the IFF mission.

Right, but a good hunk of the content is Legion based and he has a bunch of lines or references other party members don't. You're clearly meant to be able to do a bunch of stuff post IFF but can't due to things you weren't able to otherwise due to last minute changes.

[Math_Mage]

There's no "retreat." Meaningfulness is subjective.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

There's no way (short of hacking) to bring Legion on more than ~2 missions without the crew getting attacked. And this is where the subjectivity comes into play - some folks consider his dialogue/perspective unique enough to make that a good tradeoff, even if they ultimately end up replaying or reloading to save the crew for their "canon" playthrough.

I'm not disputing that some people will sacrifice their crew to play with Legion. That doesn't make playing with Legion a reward for sacrificing your crew, it makes sacrificing your crew an unfortunate and irritating prerequisite to play with Legion.

Right, but a good hunk of the content is Legion based and he has a bunch of lines or references other party members don't. You're clearly meant to be able to do a bunch of stuff post IFF but can't due to things you weren't able to otherwise due to last minute changes.

But that's the timer everyone was talking about ('it was obvious that IFF would trigger endgame content'), so it's not the case that your issue hasn't been addressed.

[Psyren]

I'm not disputing that some people will sacrifice their crew to play with Legion. That doesn't make playing with Legion a reward for sacrificing your crew, it makes sacrificing your crew an unfortunate and irritating prerequisite to play with Legion.

You say po-tay-toe... *shrug*

[GloatingSwine]

I think the Legion problem is an overall thing with features introduced late in the game, and in an RPG that includes characters. Holding them off until too late into the experience just means you don't get as much meaningful use out of them.

In the original Baldur's Gate, for instance, I would barely ever use characters who were recruited in Baldur's Gate itself because I would do most of the content before I even went there, meaning that for me half the cast and the scripting work they entailed functionally didn't exist.

It's possibly a structural issue with ME2 having so many characters and being all about recruiting them all, the whole game is putting the band together and you only get to play one number. (And also nothing that happens in the game affects the overall plot of the trilogy until the Arrival DLC...)

[Psyren]

Actually, ME2 was originally designed so you could recruit the companons in any order. But the 360 version needing to be on two discs forced them to put in a gating mechanism, so that players who didn't go in the right order wouldn't be swapping the disc after every single mission.

So all the pre-Horizon missions go on disc 1, as well as the SM, and everything else goes on disc 2.

[Jayngfet]

I think the Legion problem is an overall thing with features introduced late in the game, and in an RPG that includes characters. Holding them off until too late into the experience just means you don't get as much meaningful use out of them.

In the original Baldur's Gate, for instance, I would barely ever use characters who were recruited in Baldur's Gate itself because I would do most of the content before I even went there, meaning that for me half the cast and the scripting work they entailed functionally didn't exist.

It's possibly a structural issue with ME2 having so many characters and being all about recruiting them all, the whole game is putting the band together and you only get to play one number. (And also nothing that happens in the game affects the overall plot of the trilogy until the Arrival DLC...)

...of course, this still doesn't fix the issue that Legion was obviously meant to be included earlier. He has lines for early quests he physically can not be there for even included in the game itself.

[CozJa]

I think you've all mistaken what I'm saying.

The IFF and attack have one timer to see how many of your crew members live, obviously.

What they don't show you though is the timer BEFORE that. You can't see it or even find indication it exists unless you either crack open your game or use a save editor that registers it. It registers anything that triggers a mission end screen as one count, and Overlord has four counts, so it counts as much as doing four other missions due to it's size and the way it's organized. Shadow Broker also counts as at least two.

Again, the player isn't given any indication of this, just like they aren't given indication that there's a bunch of cut content that was finished, polished, and implemented that they don't have access to without modifying the game somehow, but it's all still there. One you check the actual mechanical workings of ME2 it's actually a really slapdash product that relies on a whole bunch of arbitrary counters and ratios and gated events just to be capable of functioning. Mainly because Bioware got way too ambitious with a number of things, and it kinda bit them in the ass hard.

Pardon me, but I still don't understand what you mean, referring to the precedent post. What does this have to do with the risk of losing people? Since you're free to do the IFF reaper mission whenever you want, after It's triggered, I don't see the problem with triggers.

Agreed... but there should be some form of progression though. I guess one could argue that the class tree provides enough of that. Personally I think ME3 did upgrades best,

But as far as upgrading the weapons themselves they did a great job. You can max out your favorite gun right away, or spread the love between a couple that you're evaluating. And you can stick with that gun for the whole game if you want to, or just until you find one with better base stats and get the money to upgrade that.

Yes, You're so right in this! I found ME3 the perfect balance between ME and ME2!

minus having to find certain weapon mods out in the field or else they're lost forever. I would have liked any that I missed to show up in the stores for a premium, just so I don't feel like I have to play with a walkthrough open on my lap so I don't miss the pistol power amplifier or whatever.

But... didn't the missed upgrades show up anyway in the spectre shop... Or I'm wrong?

[GloatingSwine]

...of course, this still doesn't fix the issue that Legion was obviously meant to be included earlier. He has lines for early quests he physically can not be there for even included in the game itself.

Yeah, though that's a problem of too many characters. Paring the team back to Shep, Miranda, Jacob*, Garrus, Tali, Mordin, and Legion and spending multiple missions with each of them would have been better (with their loyalties being variables based on outcomes of multiple missions not binaries contingent on single instances).

It's not even like the variety of characters induced variety of stories, everyone's loyalty mission except Jack, Garrus and Legion basically boils down to "And then Shepard sorted out X's daddy issues". (and don't try and nitpick over Samara, and Mordin is basically favourite protege rather than biological son but it's the same damn thing. And no, Grunt doesn't count either because his issue is that he didn't have a daddy)

* Spare writing time could be used to give him a personality.

[Psyren]

But... didn't the missed upgrades show up anyway in the spectre shop... Or I'm wrong?

The guns did... but I'm almost positive the armor upgrades and weapon mods didn't. Or maybe I'm misremembering...?

[Calemyr]

It's not even like the variety of characters induced variety of stories, everyone's loyalty mission except Jack, Garrus and Legion basically boils down to "And then Shepard sorted out X's daddy issues". (and don't try and nitpick over Samara, and Mordin is basically favourite protege rather than biological son but it's the same damn thing. And no, Grunt doesn't count either because his issue is that he didn't have a daddy)

You could say Jack's issue is still a "daddy" issue. It's still derived from her upbringing - not focused on a specific parental figure, but rather her upbringing in general. Heck, even Garrus has "daddy" issues, but he uses them as a motivation rather than crippling obstacle, so they aren't your problem.

Yeah, though that's a problem of too many characters. Paring the team back to Shep, Miranda, Jacob*, Garrus, Tali, Mordin, and Legion and spending multiple missions with each of them would have been better (with their loyalties being variables based on outcomes of multiple missions not binaries contingent on single instances).

* Spare writing time could be used to give him a personality.

This always gets on my nerves. The man has a personality. His personality is as a well-intentioned, generally professional veteran who actually has his scat together. He has a very specific point of view on things and has his own issues and concerns, he just handles it all better than most. He's the one guy on the ship who isn't relying on you to help them through their particular neurosis (that should be Chambers' job anyway). He's just the guy who's got your back. I find it a huge relief to have even just one ally that isn't some broken bird. They are a breath of fresh air in the Bioware formula.

[Psyren]

You could say Jack's issue is still a "daddy" issue. It's still derived from her upbringing - not focused on a specific parental figure, but rather her upbringing in general. Heck, even Garrus has "daddy" issues, but he uses them as a motivation rather than crippling obstacle, so they aren't your problem.

I'd say he doesn't anymore - he and his dad reconciled, to the point that his dad even tried to take his warnings about the Reapers to the old Primarch (Fedorian) with nothing more to go on than Garrus' word.

[Dienekes]

This always gets on my nerves. The man has a personality. His personality is as a well-intentioned, generally professional veteran who actually has his scat together. He has a very specific point of view on things and has his own issues and concerns, he just handles it all better than most. He's the one guy on the ship who isn't relying on you to help them through their particular neurosis (that should be Chambers' job anyway). He's just the guy who's got your back. I find it a huge relief to have even just one ally that isn't some broken bird. They are a breath of fresh air in the Bioware formula.

I honestly think his biggest problem is that he just doesn't have anything interesting to add. Normally, the whole dependable guy with his **** together would get high praise from me. However, there has to be a reason to like him beyond that. Have him tell stories of his time as a space pirate. Have him get in arguments with Miranda about the way Cerberus was heading. Dependable isn't all that interesting by itself (though neither are any one word descriptions really). There has to be something more, working completely within the pre-defined personality he was given.

The closest I got out of him was, he sort of acted like your buddy, but without the emotional depth or witty conversations that Garrus was able to add to that role. Like another companion, but worse is not a way to make an engaging character.

[Math_Mage]

None of the base companions are all that interesting. Ashley, Kaidan, Miranda, Jacob, and James against the rest? (Well, that's not fair to James. Poor guy only got one game to have fun.)

[Calemyr]

None of the base companions are all that interesting. Ashley, Kaidan, Miranda, Jacob, and James against the rest? (Well, that's not fair to James. Poor guy only got one game to have fun.)

Hey, the evolution of the Wingman archetype is responsible for Varric Tethras. It was worth the dullness.

[Psyren]

None of the base companions are all that interesting. Ashley, Kaidan, Miranda, Jacob, and James against the rest? (Well, that's not fair to James. Poor guy only got one game to have fun.)

He showed more personality in one game than Jacob did in two.

(And while we're on the subject, Javik only had one game too, yet he has reached legendary status within the fandom.)

[Math_Mage]

He showed more personality in one game than Jacob did in two.

(And while we're on the subject, Javik only had one game too, yet he has reached legendary status within the fandom.)

I agree, though really Jacob didn't get much in ME3.

[Dienekes]

None of the base companions are all that interesting. Ashley, Kaidan, Miranda, Jacob, and James against the rest? (Well, that's not fair to James. Poor guy only got one game to have fun.)

I would actually disagree with Ashley and Miranda. They were fairly interesting characters with a bit of depth. Whether or not they were likeable is a completely different matter.