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Author Topic: Mass Effect 3  (Read 53418 times)

Zangi

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #15 on: December 13, 2010, 10:15:19 am »

ME1 Inventory = Super Clunkylicious
Compounded by the fact that it was laggy....

ME2: Running out of shotgun ammo sucks.  Can't it revert to the old infinite ammo thing at super high heat per shot instead of zero ammo?
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Neonivek

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #16 on: December 13, 2010, 10:16:03 am »

Thermal Clips would have made total sense if running out of ammo meant you had to use an even weaker, or much weaker, regular ammo representing a possible leap in armor technology.
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Sir Pseudonymous

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #17 on: December 13, 2010, 10:19:18 am »

The inventory interface was clunky as fuck all ("No, you don't get to know how many things there are, nor how close you are to the limit you can carry, nor that there even is a limit until you're within 10 items of it, and no, you can't go back and delete Useless Vendor Trash IV that you picked up when you ran over a bunch of Geth five minutes ago when you run over that limit, you have to choose between Awesome Gun X and One of a Kind Armor IX to turn into a few pieces of 99% useless goo!" ::)), and every single gun (and almost every piece of armor) was either a straight upgrade or vendor trash. The ammo was occasionally useful, but that really just boiled down to either anti-personnel or anti-synthetic rounds, considering there were better ways to deal with shields than doing a piddling amount of damage to both the target's health and their shield, and explosive rounds didn't do nearly enough extra damage to be worth the reduced rate of fire, and the second game handled that better, if even more incomprehensibly, with the class ammo powers.

Inventory was a bit crazy in ME1...  But I disliked how they removed it entirely in ME2.  Removed a good chunk of the RPG feel.  I kind of like finding some uber bit of armor or a fancy weapon somewhere, and then having to agonize over who gets to equip it.  ME2 just got ride of the inventory completely.  Weapons for everyone!  The armor customization was kind of fun...  But you could only do it for Shepard.
Yeah, they could have done it a little better, but it was still a radical improvement over the way the first handled it. At least the guns did (semi) unique things, and your armor stayed more or less static through the game, making it feel much more personal than progressing through a rainbow of "Why the fuck did you paint body armor bright fucking pink?!" colors at random.

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Hated thermal clips in ME2.  Just plain hated them.  Didn't make sense to me.  Why would you go from infinite ammo to a clip that limited your ability to fire your weapon?  Seems like you should have been able to re-use the thermal clips after they'd cooled down, instead of just chucking them and hoping you found more later.  Or maybe you should have been able to keep firing, but much slower, when you ran out of thermal clips.
From a gameplay perspective, it made sense, and worked well (especially compared to ME1, where I had to be careful never to let my weapons overheat because they'd occasionally stick that way (companions too) until I reloaded an earlier save (thankfully, patching for the DLC with those batarian fucks on the asteroid fixed that problem)). From a background fluff perspective, it made fuck all sense, and probably should have been handled the way it originally sounded like they were making them: expendable insta-cooldown options so you could keep shooting without overheating. Maybe that didn't work in testing, who knows?

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I'm eager to see ME3.  Very curious to see how importing a save from ME1/ME2 affects the gameplay.  Really curious to see what happens with the Reapers after all this...  They've been built up into some kind of seriously unstoppable evil, I can't wait to see how they're defeated.
They absorb a human with the common cold. The common, anthrax-ebola hybrid cold.
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Sergius

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #18 on: December 13, 2010, 12:03:23 pm »

Haven't finished ME2 but my opinion is pretty much the same as most: thermal clips "in-universe" didn't make any sense. "In-game", maybe a minor annoyance... but still nagging. Inventory management, I would probably have gone more in-between (or maybe more weapon variety, but with the same "you find one, you can have as many as you want" except for unique prototypes) but the original ME was a PITA. (pro tip: in the first ME, turn everything before weapon ranks V or so into goo. seriously, the credits aren't even worth it for those, and with the later guns you'll hit the money cap pretty quickly :P of course, once you get to 999 omnigel, bleh).
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Lightning4

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #19 on: December 13, 2010, 12:31:28 pm »

Thermal Clips would have made total sense if running out of ammo meant you had to use an even weaker, or much weaker, regular ammo representing a possible leap in armor technology.

Hm, actually the most sense I've heard regarding the thermal clip change.

Although if you think about it, it could've been that weapons and armor in the ME universe evolved to the point where ME1 era heat sinks were no longer up to the task. Higher and higher energies, more efficient and brutal ways of killing, and consequently new methods to stop that killing, etc.

Probably the reason why we don't have the option to downgrade to an ME1 era weapon is that it wouldn't be very effective, like trying to kill a tank with a handgun. Only the tank armor is on an angry guy who's shooting at you.

I dunno.
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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #20 on: December 13, 2010, 12:56:02 pm »

Still, though, being able to shoot AT ALL is infinitely more useful than not being able to shoot at all. Even if it would've meant a minor increase in weight / less ammo in the gun, it would've been more useful than lugging around thermal clips.
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Gantolandon

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #21 on: December 13, 2010, 01:34:54 pm »

I was astonished how bad the inventory system in the first game was. In the most RPGs it's nothing special, in ME1 I actually suffered every time I found some weapons from stray geth. I frequently used to run with inferior weapons just because I couldn't bring myself to rummage through this mess and check if Obliterator XXX is better than Masturbator XXIX. Also, the equipment seemed to be generated randomly (with some variations), so even searching the dirty, flea-ridden rags of a vorcha junk peddler near the end of the game would give me better weapons than a crate in the middle of a military research base. They could have at least thrown a "omni-gel all" button.

This was absolutely the worst inventory system I have seen inside a non-fictional game.
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Ø

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #22 on: December 13, 2010, 01:51:01 pm »

KOTOR 1&2 were more enjoyable to me than ME 1&2. I expect ME3 to be just like ME2, but removing one annoying thing, adding another, removing the old time-filler minigame, adding a new time filler minigame, and maybe making a couple tweaks to classes or a few details about combat. Also, something about potential sex with green skinned alien babes.
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etgfrog

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #23 on: December 13, 2010, 02:22:02 pm »

What i'd like to see is more like the weapon generates heat and can cool off on its own but you have an option of using the thermal clip to drain the heat quickly for continuous fire.
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Ephemeriis

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #24 on: December 13, 2010, 02:35:21 pm »

Probably the reason why we don't have the option to downgrade to an ME1 era weapon is that it wouldn't be very effective, like trying to kill a tank with a handgun. Only the tank armor is on an angry guy who's shooting at you.

This is, more or less, the explanation we're given.

We're told that it isn't so much how hard you hit a shield, as how often you hit it.  So rapid-fire weapons became very powerful.  And the built-in heatsinks couldn't keep up with the heat being put off from these guns anymore.  So they basically built disposable heatsinks.  Dump all your heat into a clip, get it good and toasty, and then eject it instead of waiting for it to cool off.

But that doesn't make much sense.  You're throwing these clips away, when all they have to do is cool off.  The clips you find scattered around the battlefield?  They're generally other people's spent clips that've had a chance to cool off.  So why not just hang onto your own clips and re-use them when they're cool?

Or, barring that, why not throw in a traditional heatsink in addition to the clips?  Yes, I know, it can't keep up...  So I can only fire one shot every once in a while...  And it will not be effective for a real fight...  But it'd give you some ability to continue fighting after you'd run out of clips.

Looking at this from a storyline perspective it just plain does not make sense.

From a gameplay perspective...  I still don't like it, but it's at least acceptable.

I'd prefer to be able to keep firing even if my shots were going to be slower or ineffective.  There's something psychologically satisfying about being able to keep shooting even if it isn't doing any good.

But the clips aren't a gamebreaker.

They just don't make sense.

I was astonished how bad the inventory system in the first game was. In the most RPGs it's nothing special, in ME1 I actually suffered every time I found some weapons from stray geth. I frequently used to run with inferior weapons just because I couldn't bring myself to rummage through this mess and check if Obliterator XXX is better than Masturbator XXIX. Also, the equipment seemed to be generated randomly (with some variations), so even searching the dirty, flea-ridden rags of a vorcha junk peddler near the end of the game would give me better weapons than a crate in the middle of a military research base. They could have at least thrown a "omni-gel all" button.

Yup.

I like the inventory management and loot hunting aspect of most RPGs.  It's fun to find some uber weapon.  It's fun to figure out who's going to get your one supergun.  It's fun to go shopping and see how much you can afford to get and agonize over whether you should buy two good guns or one amazing one.

But ME1 was just plain awful.

Tons of loot everywhere.  Most of it basically indistinguishable.  Three different guns with just a single point or two of difference between them.  Then you had the weapon mods...  And the armor...  All of it available in different styles and ranks...  And none of it terribly different from anything else.

No quick and easy way to dig through your inventory.  No good way to omnigel all the crap at once.  And when you were over-full there was no way to skip over the really awesome thing you just picked up and delete something else instead.

Absolutely terrible.

But I don't think just getting rid of it like they did in ME2 was a good solution.  I still would've liked to be able to go shopping for weapons and armor.  I still would've liked to be able to equip different types of armor on my party members.  I still would've liked inventory management and loot hunting to be an aspect of the game, instead of just vanishing completely.
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Sergius

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #25 on: December 13, 2010, 02:45:22 pm »

In my last playthrough, I did the only sane thing and upped the item limit to like 999999, by editing a text file.
Then I never actually omni-geled or sold anything just to make space (except the level I crap just so I would have repair supplies. also, forget lockpicking, just use omni-gel on everything :P).

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Ephemeriis

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #26 on: December 13, 2010, 02:51:52 pm »

In my last playthrough, I did the only sane thing and upped the item limit to like 999999, by editing a text file.
Then I never actually omni-geled or sold anything just to make space (except the level I crap just so I would have repair supplies. also, forget lockpicking, just use omni-gel on everything :P).

Nice fix.  I'll have to try that on my next play-through.

Lousy game design though.

Kind of reminds me of the item decay hack/fix in System Shock 2.
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Ephemeriis

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #27 on: December 13, 2010, 06:21:19 pm »

Just got home from work and watched the video...  Looks good.

OH HEY WE NEED ORIGINAL SOMETHING! I KNOW! WHY DONT WE PUT REAPERS ON LEGS MAKE THEM INTO TRIPODS AND RIP FROM WORLD OF WARS????? DURRRRRRRR!?

The Reapers shown in previous ME games - Sovereign in specific - had kind of a squid-like design.  There are a couple spots where you see Sovereign landing on those legs.  The Reapers shown in this trailer aren't some new War of the Worlds tripod-esque Reapers...  That's how they looked in the first game.
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lordnincompoop

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #28 on: December 13, 2010, 06:31:33 pm »

OH HEY WE NEED ORIGINAL SOMETHING! I KNOW! WHY DONT WE PUT REAPERS ON LEGS MAKE THEM INTO TRIPODS AND RIP FROM WORLD OF WARS????? DURRRRRRRR!?

Don't use caps lock, please. And if you're going to prove a point at least have the decency to do it in a reasonable manner.
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Shrugging Khan

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Re: Mass Effect 3
« Reply #29 on: December 13, 2010, 06:51:52 pm »

So,in the footfalls of ME2 dumbing down upon the already not exactly intellectual ME1 one and maintaining the repetitive boredom on the sides, I suppose ME3, will be another instalment of all-humans-are-americans-all-aliens-are-britons, this time simple enough for comatose children, boring enough for buried corpses, and interesting enough for lobotomised console players.

Hooray for Sci-Fi taking a dive  :'(
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