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  • Locked thread
Elotana
Dec 12, 2003

and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account
Previous MP Thread
SP Thread / Spoilers

subujun posted:

Hey, don't forget to include the list of goons for multiplayer:

List of players and usernames and Page for adding yourself.

:siren:All of the multiplayer DLC so far is free, but you have to "buy" it for $0. Make sure you do this before you play or you'll miss out on pretty much half the game and won't be able to join matches.:siren:



THE BASICS

ME3's multiplayer is a cooperative four-player horde mode developed by a mostly independent team within Bioware. They've been very active with post-release support in the form of new maps, classes, powers, and weekly balance tweaks. It's a very well-balanced game and while some classes and guns are better than others, they're all viable at all difficulties depending on your play style. I went into ME3 expecting to ignore the multiplayer entirely, and wound up hooked. Even if you really hate the endings, you should give it a try.

Rounds consist of 10 waves of enemies with short breaks in between. Each wave increases the number and variety of enemies, and waves 3, 6, and 10 have timed objectives which need to be completed before enemies will stop respawning. These objectives are randomly chosen from the following:

Kill - 4 random enemies are highlighted and must be killed
Disarm - 4 devices randomly appear on the map and must be disarmed
Delivery - 2 objects must be carried from one part of the map to another
Hack - One specific area of the map must be occupied and defended
Escort - A drone must be defended as it travels along a pre-determined path

Completing missions gives you XP and credits. XP allows you to level up your character with more powers, and credits let you buy reinforcement packs. These packs can contain anything from one-time use ammo and armor powers, new guns and gun upgrades, new alien characters, etc. Items are awarded on a scale depending on how rare/expensive they are:

Common items have a blue background and are found in every pack.
Uncommon items have a silver background and are guaranteed to appear in Veteran packs.
Rare items have a gold background and are guaranteed to appear in Spectre packs.
Ultra-rare items have a black background and aren't guaranteed in any pack, but your best chance is with Premium Spectre packs.
There are also a handful of promotional items, like the N7 guns (which are only awarded during promotional weekends) or odd pre-order stuff hardly anyone uses like the Battlefield 3 Soldier or the Collector Rifle.

CHARACTERS

Characters are capped at level 20. At this point you can either "promote" them, which adds to your single player War Assets and resets them to level 1, or you can just continue to play with them on higher difficulties and rack up more credits.

You start out with two identical Human options in each class, but there are many races (6-8 in each class) you'll unlock over the course of the game. At this point there are way too many classes and abilities to usefully list, but the always useful theorycrafting machine from the Bioware forums can provide them if you'd like. This also lets you plan your character's build in advance and see your HP/damage stats, as well as conveniently share your favorite character builds to other players. By way of example, here are some pro build suggestions by yours truly.

MAPS

Original Maps - These are exact copies of the N7 sidequests in the single player:
Dagger
Ghost
Giant
Glacier
Reactor
White

Hazard Maps - These are newer versions of the original six maps with added "hazards," which range from cosmetic (Giant) to annoying (White) to hilarious (Reactor). They usually contain more grenades and slightly altered textures, but are otherwise identical.

DLC Maps - These are original, smaller-scale remixes of single-player locations (some cut during development):
Condor (Palaven)
Goddess (Thessia)
Hydra (cut Quarian mission)
Jade (SurKesh)
London (Earth)
Vancouver (Earth)
Rio (cut Earth mission)

WEAPONS

The easiest way of tracking your weapons and items is the official Multiplayer Manifest, which takes your Bioware account and puts everything in easy-to-digest tabs showing you how unlucky you are compared to everyone else on your friends list.

If you want some unofficial weapon stats, this google doc is updated fairly frequently to keep up with the weekly balance changes. The game is tweaked so often that the stat bars in-game mean essentially nothing. For instance, they show the Valiant as having a low rate of fire when it's one of the fastest sniper rifles in the game.

Keep in mind that armored enemies get a flat damage reduction per shot, so you're penalized for using weapons with a high rate of fire but low damage per shot (mainly assault rifles). Conversely, shielded enemies have a damage "gate" which negates any extra damage done by the shot that finishes off their shields (this mainly affects the single-shot sniper rifles).

ENEMIES

Cerberus - Generally considered the easiest enemy faction. Lots of shielded enemies, with the only armored unit being the laffo Dragoon and the HP sink Atlas. Mostly dangerous due to Phantoms, who have cloaks, tough melee attacks, tougher hand cannon attacks, and one-hit-kills.

Reapers - Lots of armored enemies, and lots of very tiny enemies (Swarmers, Husks) that result in death by a thousand cuts. They're anchored by Banshees, which are fast and have the cheapest one-hit-kill, but in practice you'll probably die more to combined fire from the other enemies while you're busy running from a Banshee.

Geth - Both shielded and armored units. Very slow-moving, so fighting them is more of a matter of territorial attrition. Anchored by Primes, which don't one-hit-kill but have a ton of HP and stagger the gently caress out of you, although like Cerberus, you'll probably die more to the sneaky cloaky unit (Hunters).

Collectors - Only unit with multiple barrier enemies, plus two extremely hefty tanks in the Scion and Praetorian. Units can become "possessed" which makes them tougher and gives them an extra attack (different for each enemy). Kill or avoid Swarmers if you're a caster class, they will stop your power recharge.

TACTICS / TIPS

Work together. The game rewards you for this. Hitting an enemy with multiple biotic and tech attacks will set off biotic explosions and tech bursts for huge area damage and is one of the quicker ways to wipe out enemies. Several classes can set up combo attacks solo, but things get exponentially easier with helpful teammates. Sticking together will also keep your teammates from having to cross the entire map to revive your dumb rear end. Looking at you here, Human Vanguards.

Save your "consumable" items (medi-gel, missiles) for the later waves. The best time to use them is during waves 7-10, since these are the toughest waves and completing the wave 10 objective is what nets your credit payout. Wave 11's credit and XP bonuses are minor compared to Wave 10, so don't be that guy who dies leaving missiles on the table. Think of extraction as a bonus round.

Watch your cooldowns. If you're a class that relies heavily on powers, like an Asari Adept, you should only carry one gun and that gun should be light enough to keep your cooldowns near 200%. On the other hand, if you're an N7 Destroyer, feel free to take two heavy-rear end guns and go to town.

BUGS? IN A BIOWARE GAME? SURELY YOU JEST GOON SIR

Although this is on balance a great game, there are a number of bugs that Bioware have yet to fix, most likely due to the expense of console patches. Here are the known issues with the game:
- Shield Boost will lock up players in reloading animations. Heavy melee to free yourself.
- The detonation evolutions on Snap Freeze and Electric Slash do not work.
- Tech bursts detonated with Snap Freeze are centered on the player rather than the enemy.
- Incinerate's rank 6 combo evolution does not work with Snap Freeze.
- Asari Huntress' cloak does not give bonuses to weapons (retconned into a feature).
- Blade Armor's bounce-back damage does not scale correctly above Silver.
- Tactical Scan's rank 5 headshot evolution is broken.
- Ballistic/Nightshade Blades will not fire from cover.
- You cannot Shadow Strike an Atlas.
- Playing the Talon Mercenary will force default keybinds on PC.

Elotana fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 28, 2013

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Elotana
Dec 12, 2003

and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account
GOONFAQS:

Zoran posted:

Can you edit the OP to add links to my guide with builds for every class?

Part One: Adept, Soldier, & Engineer
Part Two: Sentinel, Infiltrator, & Vanguard

:siren::siren:I'm trying out [CLASS], how should I spec it? by Smol

:siren:I'm trying out [CLASS], how should I spec it? by Elotana (lowercase builds are a lil dated)

:siren:jpmeyer's Best of the Best Banner Guide

Elotana's Guide to Vanguards (Slayer-Specific Guide)

Two Finger's Guide to Vanguarding

Lagomorphic's N7 Slayer Guide

Lagomorphic's Guide to Farming Platinum on Firebase Glacier

UnknownMercenary's Krogan Soldier Guide

Pumpking's Mini-Guide to the Cerbguard/Cerbdept

SurreptitiousMuffin's Short Guide to the Batarian Soldier

SciFiDownBeat's Guide to Individual Kit Tactics

Elotana's Weapon Tier List (8/24/2012)

SurreptitiousMuffin's Short Guide to the Krogan Sentinel

Elotana fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 27, 2014

Brainamp
Sep 4, 2011

More Zen than Zenyatta

I'm still really curious how they managed to bug so many of the abilities.

"Bugs? Well we'll just leave to the players to find them. I'm sure they can handle it."

That DICK!
Sep 28, 2010

The innate melee bonuses on Krogan Rage work. It's just the melee you gain from the Rage effect. Always spec into Melee unless you are some sort of bitch or something. Are you?

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Mr Dog posted:

Human Soldier w/Acolyte

I'd actually rather like to try making a private Bronze game with the most deliberately terrible loadouts imaginable. I'd probably end up having to melee stragglers and do opportunistic grab kills

I've done this a couple of times with a buddy of mine. We set up a public Silver lobby with the worst loadouts we can imagine. Drellguards with Incisors!

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.
This should basically be in the OP concerning new players and soldiers; Don't take concussive shot. Ever.

Elotana
Dec 12, 2003

and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Batham posted:

This should basically be in the OP concerning new players and soldiers; Don't take concussive shot. Ever.
I've taken an 0/6/6/6/6 soldier into Gold and done quite well. One of the game's strengths is the variety, so I didn't really want to go down this road since it ends in "Geth Infiltrator with Piranha or gently caress off"

subujun
Mar 31, 2010
Hey, don't forget to include the list of goons for multiplayer:

List of players and usernames and Page for adding yourself.

Zikan
Feb 29, 2004

Elotana posted:

[ - N7 Shadow's rank 6 sword mastery evolution does not give bonuses to Shadow Strike.

God damnit, there's probably at least 20 deaths I've had since I got the class that would have been prevented by knowing this and taking the extra health/shield and increased speed.

Krampus Grewcock
Aug 26, 2010

Gruss vom Krampus!

Zikan posted:

God damnit, there's probably at least 20 deaths I've had since I got the class that would have been prevented by knowing this and taking the extra health/shield and increased speed.

A cloaked melee with the Sword Master speced for armor damage does more harm to most enemies than Shadow Strike. Just be ready to run like gently caress.

Lagomorphic
Apr 21, 2008

AKA: Orthonormal
My advice to new players is to ignore the Soldier class entirely when starting out. Soldiers are a gun class and due to the unlock system you'll be stuck with poo poo guns for quite a while. Conversely if you get the hang of powers combos you can do fine on gold with Engineer, Adept, and Sentinal with just the basic starting guns. The sooner you stop playing bronze, the sooner you'll get good guns.

MJeff
Jun 2, 2011

THE LIAR
So I heard that if you slap ultralights on an SMG and slap them on a pistol too, they'll both work, and I guess the OP confirms it. I guess it's double sidearm time in Fury town.

Crows Turn Off
Jan 7, 2008


Which is a better deal - one PSP for 99k or two SPs for 120k?

Elotana
Dec 12, 2003

and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Crows Turn Off posted:

Which is a better deal - one PSP for 99k or two SPs for 120k?
Unless you're specifically looking for silver gear, the PSP.

limited
Dec 10, 2005
Limited Sanity
Aren't Cerberus characters also still bugged and don't get bonuses from fitness, or did they fix that? It doesn't feel like it.

Also another tip that might be worth adding to the OP for those looking to metagame their unlocks is to buy out the basic packs so the starter guns are maxed out, so you don't end up wasting more expensive pack unlocks on a Avenger 4 or whatever. Especially if you're impatient/lazy/etc. and want to start buying the better packs with MSP or whatever.

limited fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Aug 6, 2012

Der Luftwaffle
Dec 29, 2008
The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

D0ct0rAlanGrant
Aug 23, 2007

~My country is a complete embarrassment to world football and they deserve abuse from everyone at all times.~

~Handle your balls? Frenchmen can't resist!~
Destroyer with pirannah and typhoon and 3 wide spread grenades make for quite an explosionfest :shepface:

D0ct0rAlanGrant fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 6, 2012

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Ex-Cerberus weren't ever bugged, they're just fragile and Smash and Lash have obnoxiously long animations, relatively speaking.

Also, concussive shot is a perfectly decent power. With maximum force it's really good at killing unshielded enemies, which is handy if three husks are running at you while you're holding an empty Claymore. In general it's useful to stagger enemies, cause enemies to dodge, and set off tech bursts. I prefer it to frag grenades, which I can't be bothered to learn to throw properly.

MJeff
Jun 2, 2011

THE LIAR

Der Luftwaffle posted:

The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

It's a bad system that forces people to look at it as a sheer numbers game, unfortunately. If you play the game a lot, you're gonna run into a bunch of sub-200 N7s and they're just gonna be terrible and you'll wipe because these people don't know what the gently caress they're doing and X amount of time and X amount of credits go down the toilet.

Unfortunately, in most cases, it's simpler to just kick anybody whose N7 is low rather than risk it. It's a really stupid superficial system, and I dunno what Bioware expected people to do with it.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
Successful Bronze extract = +1 N7 Rank
Successful Silver extract = +2 N7 Rank
Successful Gold extract = +4 N7 Rank
Successful Platinum extract +8 N7 Rank

For >Bronze, halve it for partial extractions.

That would make N7 ranks mean something, and actually motivate people to put in more than a token effort after Wave 10 payout.

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.

Mr Dog posted:

Successful Bronze extract = +1 N7 Rank
Successful Silver extract = +2 N7 Rank
Successful Gold extract = +4 N7 Rank
Successful Platinum extract +8 N7 Rank

For >Bronze, halve it for partial extractions.

That would make N7 ranks mean something, and actually motivate people to put in more than a token effort after Wave 10 payout.

At the same time, I'd also give each race/class combo an individual level, instead of spreading it out across the entire class.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
ew no that would make me even more reluctant to promote than I am already

MJeff
Jun 2, 2011

THE LIAR
Unless promotion only applied to that specific class, I guess, but I think that'd just make the game a lot more grindy and force people to spend way more time in Bronze than they wanted to.

The most obvious solution to that is to change the godawful store system, though, I guess.

Schubalts
Nov 26, 2007

People say bigger is better.

But for the first time in my life, I think I've gone too far.

VJeff posted:

So I heard that if you slap ultralights on an SMG and slap them on a pistol too, they'll both work, and I guess the OP confirms it. I guess it's double sidearm time in Fury town.

I do this on my Fury, and it works. It's a very odd way to 'fix' SMG Ultralight, but there you go.

Vietnamwees
May 8, 2008

by Fluffdaddy
Veteran Packs are definitely more reliable for getting Uncommon weapon upgrades, I know because thats how I finished maxing out all my Uncommon weapons. It's a bit of a toss up between getting Uncommon weapon upgrades and level III consumables since those are Uncommon now too, but they're relatively cheap, so I don't think its a big deal.

Wowporn
May 31, 2012

HarumphHarumphHarumph
I feel like I'm contributing to the cause because my Krogans are pink and lavender :3:. Also, I know people here hate the acolyte, but I love it when Furies use them. I've played with furies using them a couple times, and seeing cloudy shadow person bouncing a bunch of explody balls around the little room areas is fun. As you can see, I am a very serious player with not messed up priorities.

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.

Mr Dog posted:

ew no that would make me even more reluctant to promote than I am already

Oh, I meant that promotion would only affect that class/race combo and do nothing but reset that combo. I wouldn't up your N7 score or anything. Regardless, even your idea on it's own would make the leader boards actually mean something.

AngryBooch
Sep 26, 2009

Der Luftwaffle posted:

The whole N7 ranking number is absolutely retarded. I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked from even silver games just because I'm below 100, and I'm a person who regularly scores first or second. This whole trend of penalizing people who don't have the time to grind out games for hours on end really needs to stop.

I pretty much don't ever vote to kick anyone above character level 10 (or good guns) from silver games but I've gotten to a point in gold matches where if you aren't level 18+ or packing some serious heat I'm voting. If I'm trying to farm Cerb/Glacier/Gold or Platinum/Glacier, get out if you can't set off biotic explosions, abuse grenades, or are packing a piranha/reegar. I'm sick of wiping on wave 6 and losing consumables because somebody came into the game with a Geth SMG on their Quarian Engineer into a farming game.

nacon
May 7, 2005

Mr Dog posted:

Successful Bronze extract = +1 N7 Rank
Successful Silver extract = +2 N7 Rank
Successful Gold extract = +4 N7 Rank
Successful Platinum extract +8 N7 Rank

For >Bronze, halve it for partial extractions.

That would make N7 ranks mean something, and actually motivate people to put in more than a token effort after Wave 10 payout.

Yeah, making extractions mean something would be nice. I would definitely care more about it if there was a system like this in place, beyond just re-leveling characters over and over (which I find painfully annoying.)

You could probably build some kind of equation that subtracts from the bonus per player that didn't make the extraction in order to reward full extractions. You could probably structure it such that (Extraction Bonus - (number of players down)) is your final reward. So, on a silver extract with one player down it would be (2 - 1) for a total of +1 N7 Rank. That same situation on Gold would result in +3 N7 rank, etc.

nacon fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 6, 2012

Vietnamwees
May 8, 2008

by Fluffdaddy
Bronze +1,250 x number of players surviving extraction
Silver +2,500 x number of players surviving extraction
Gold +3,750 x number of players surviving extraction
Platinum +5,000 x number of players surviving extraction

You really want to have people give a poo poo about extraction? Put a credit reward with it. End of story.

LogicNinja
Jan 21, 2011

...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

VJeff posted:

So I heard that if you slap ultralights on an SMG and slap them on a pistol too, they'll both work, and I guess the OP confirms it. I guess it's double sidearm time in Fury town.

Or I could keep using my Piranha on the fury and shotgun-to-the-face things to death. Piranha VII beats Hurricane I/Carnifex 10, I'm pretty sure.

The Sean
Apr 17, 2005

Am I handsome now?


I had not played for a while and I just started to endulge in the new maps and characters when:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuD0Yy3bb7w

reagan
Apr 29, 2008

by Lowtax
Mmmm nice new OP. I haven't seen Impsy (the old OP's xbox live tag) online in ages.

Looking forward to a ton of constantly updated guides from the experts. I really only care about the Turian Sentinel for now.

MJeff
Jun 2, 2011

THE LIAR

Vietnamwees posted:

Bronze +1,250 x number of players surviving extraction
Silver +2,500 x number of players surviving extraction
Gold +3,750 x number of players surviving extraction
Platinum +5,000 x number of players surviving extraction

You really want to have people give a poo poo about extraction? Put a credit reward with it. End of story.

It really is a massive oversight that the last part of every mission becomes completely pointless once your character reaches level 20. It raises the question of why Wave 11 even exists on Gold and Platinum.

Pumpking
Oct 27, 2007

Who is number 1?
Probably because single player was intended to be the real meat and potatoes of the game with multiplayer more of an added extra. And to be honest it shows, what with the basic format, numerous bugs and the odd gameplay decisions people are discussing.

Still it turns out multiplayer is great despite the issues (free regular updates probably helping a lot there), and I haven't touched single player since the week after I bought the game.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


VJeff posted:

It really is a massive oversight that the last part of every mission becomes completely pointless once your character reaches level 20. It raises the question of why Wave 11 even exists on Gold and Platinum.

Easiest way to address this and N7 ranking issues would be to award credits for promoting, probably in the ballpark of 100k to make it worthwhile. Players have an incentive to keep cycling through new characters and missing the full extraction XP bonus hurts more. They could even move the Mission Complete XP to Wave 11 to put more of an emphasis on surviving through extraction.

Sarern
Nov 4, 2008

:toot:
Won't you take me to
Bomertown?
Won't you take me to
BONERTOWN?

:toot:
From the previous thread:

Wampus42 posted:

Speaking of not hating this character, what's the rhythm that you guys use with it? I tried to the whole snap freeze set up for tech burst, but it just ends up with me using melee a lot because it feels faster at taking down lower tier enemies.

I rarely try for tech bursts on mine. I ignore Incinerate, and spam Snap Freeze through corners and walls. I use Energy Drain to stun and strip shields, especially on enemies far away, and when things get close I Snap Freeze -> plant shield -> repeat until everything falls down, and if they get within melee range I melee them to death. I took the armor debuff on Snap Freeze so when Banshees and things show up your teammates can usually burn them down pretty quickly while you Snap Freeze and plant your shield.

This works on silver, but I've only done 1 gold with it.

Crows Turn Off
Jan 7, 2008


I just played with a Demolisher who didn't once deploy the Supply Pylon. What the hell?

Magmarashi
May 20, 2009





Crows Turn Off posted:

I just played with a Demolisher who didn't once deploy the Supply Pylon. What the hell?

She's married to the Widow and Claymore Drell Adept

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Strange Matter
Oct 6, 2009

Ask me about Genocide
Hmmm I wonder if I have enough distance from ME3 to enjoy Multiplayer again.

Probably not.

Still I'm glad that the philosophy I adhere to is so prominently bannered upon the second post.

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