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I'm just thinking how much better Mass Effect was on PC than it was on console - or rather how much better it was with keyboard + mouse than it ever was with a gamepad - the difference between 8 powers on the numberline and 4 on the D-pad is huge. Also remember that Mass Effect 2 and 3 are only true cover based shooters if you're low level playing a soldier. Infiltrator and Sentinel can move pretty freely, Engineer's playing X-Com, Adept's a caster, and the Vanguard's playing ... something. And has anyone else noticed they don't seem to be including the Pinnacle Station DLC?
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Feb 3, 2021 01:57
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exquisite tea posted:Mark Meer improved as Shepard as time went on, but Hale was always good. She had an icy intensity that was just perfect for Renegade runs. "How about goodbye?" I believe Mark Meer was given far more direction than Jennifer Hale at first - and was told to play Shep as a blank stoic badass (my description). Meanwhile Hale was more or less left on her own - the female option they didn't expect many people to use but was at least cheap advertising so why bother worrying what she does? So she was able to give her interpretation of Shep a personality and a smirk in her voice some of the time, raw intensity at other points. And as the series went on Meer was told more and more to model his performance on Hale's.
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Feb 3, 2021 15:55
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DourCricket posted:Yeah the crazy thing is that, other than requiring Frostbite, basically every mistake is Bioware shooting themselves in the foot or just faffing about for years. Even that wasn't EA's fault other than as enablers. Bioware actively went to EA and asked for Frostbite back in 2011. EA gave it to them - and gave them support for years. Part of the point of Mass Effect: Inquisition was to learn to use the engine - and EA supported them. EA gave less support teaching them to use Frostbite over time and for Andromeda and Anthem because they had other projects, and because the Inqisition tools were meant to support the rest of Bioware's games and other games were switching to Frostbite. And this is a big part of how EA kills studios. Westwood also died because they were faffing around rather than making games, EA asked them what they had, and they had nothing.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:45
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My ME3 Renegade ending is that the goal is to get the Citadel arms to open ... so Joker can use the Normandy to blow up the Conduit. It's not a full relay, so it "just" takes out everything in the vicinity - the entire Reaper fleet, the entire defending fleet, and Earth. Oh, and Shep. And are you guys kidding about Project Lazarus? It's the most successful project Cerberus ever ran. Do you have any idea how much fundraising TIM did on the back of having literally raised someone from the dead from people like Miranda's dad? And even the Normandy? Successful prototype, excellent PR from Cerberus, planets full of grateful people. It ludicrously exceeded the objectives - and he didn't really lose anything he wouldn't have lost if the Normandy simply hadn't come back from the suicide mission. He even managed to mostly neutralise Jack ffs.
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Feb 19, 2021 21:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think I've heard much about 2077 as an actual game though, it's all been a bunch of bugs and technical issues, which is the most understandable flaw in the business, and games that are extremely buggy at release will often get fixed in a few months. A bad story will usually be broke forever. The problem with Cyberbug 2077 is that there just isn't any "there" there, and although the story is fine many of the bugs are consequences of the fact that the world is a facade and breaks as soon as you step off the beaten path and discover that the systems just aren't there. It's sub Mass Effect 1 levels of background NPC tech and came out more than 10 years later. Or, more accurately, sub ME1 levels of background mechanics that pretends to be more and leads to comedy and bad gameplay. Those NPCs milling around the Citadel (or Novaria) without voice lines, whether sitting, walking, or dancing - I'm pretty sure everyone's aware they aren't anything more than graphical models with simple animations and nothing much to them. They're there for the ambience. Because Cyberbug 2077 wants to pretend to be a bustling city instead of using hand placed NPCs for the background it has NPCs randomly generated from a set list and doing things, frequently involving walking. They've little more AI than the ME1 NPCs. But. Because Cyberbug 2077 is a mess there's no duplication check on these NPCs so you occasionally see e.g. clones of the same shirtless guy in a bright gold jacket and purple fedora a second apart. Also because it's on foundations that make Andromeda seem good these NPCs will literally disappear if you look away from them a few seconds and look back. And if you somehow block the road (e.g. with an abandoned car) the driving AI is so pathetic that the cars can't work out a way round the parked car and just pile up indefinitely - or rather until you look away for a few seconds at which point the traffic jam you have created despawns. This sounds like (and to be fair is) hilarious fun and games even if it weakens the worldbuilding and immersion, but the systems being so superficial have a knock-on effect on the gameplay of what is supposed to be an open world RPG. An obvious thing is that being a GTAV influenced open world being attacked by the cops should be a thing, and it is in Cyberbug 2077. However remember that the AI is so stupid it can't drive round a car blocking the road and so lacks in persistence that NPCs and cars despawn when you turn away. So the cops can't do what I'd expect, which is spawn half a mile out and negotiate traffic to get to you - and chase you if you run away. Instead the cops have to spawn in just out of sight of you and can't really chase you. More obnoxiously they'll spawn just about anywhere nearby out of your sight, come towards you, and start shooting. Anywhere out of sight including in garages with only one entrance that you can see - or right behind you.
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Feb 23, 2021 22:05
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The thing about Mass Effect 3 is that it's only a slight exaggeration to say that as far as being an RPG the good parts weren't new and the new parts weren't good. If I look at all the highlights they are almost all payoffs for things set up in games one and two, especially on Tuchanka (I genuinely do not care about Lieutenant Victus, but everything round Wrex and Mordin Solus was awesome). Rannoch was almost good - it was seriously underdone, and might have been good if Javik wasn't Day One DLC. Now it was a pretty decent Left4Dead/Vermintide type thing, but all the story highs I can recall were created by taking the hooks from previous games and paying them off.
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Feb 26, 2021 03:32
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think there's a lot of evidence that EA is the cause of Bioware structuring itself towards less reachable goals with less creative power behind them, and less coherent visions and more annoying business models. The whole thing where a lot of important creatives get moved around from game to game in the middle of production seems really bad for the whole process. The way I read it EA takes what it thinks are promising game studios and gives them almost unlimited budgets (in reality just budgets that are an order of magnitude higher than they are used to) and tells them to make whatever they really want to and spend whatever they need to make their games the best possible. This works - unshackling the creative team gives us games like The Sims which would have been too risky for Maxis to produce on their own but was the answer to a creative team being asked "If you could produce literally any game what would it be?" It also gives us games with much higher production values - compare ME2 to ME1 - there was a lot more I suspect spent on that game. Meanwhile there's the other question some version of which gets asked inevitably by these studios "If we've got these big budgets no one is going to notice if we spend a fraction of them on hookers and blow, right?" And a year or two after that "We should call our next game after Bob Dylan" or "Hey! We're a casual gaming company so let's make a FPS" or "There's no pressure on us. Let's just play rather than make a game" (Westwood in that case).
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Feb 27, 2021 01:36
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To me the ME3 ending's biggest problem is that it's only the right half of the dialogue wheel - the obvious half. If you're blazing through ME3 and have managed at least one major failure (e.g. having to choose between the Quarians and the Geth and having one wiped out) it's fine. But if you've spent most of your time on the left hand half of the dialogue wheel, always looking deeper and always trying to find third ways (especially if you've Upper-Left-Blue'd your way across the Galaxy) then it just feels empty of the interest and depth that made Mass Effect into ... Mass Effect.
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Mar 9, 2021 10:39
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Rockstar Massacre posted:yeah ME1 was fun and janky and ME2 was the all fun removed version. ME3 tightened it up a bit but it was still a dedicated cover shooter so only so much you can do to polish that turd ME2 had the fun removed from some classes and added to others. ME1 the fun was mostly in the biotics, with the tech skills all being out-scaled and the military skills being fairly basic but effective. The fun class was the adept, with the vanguard being an adept that dropped singularity (and stasis but no one cared) for a toggle to reset their cooldowns on everything else. The Sentinel was a sucky adept which got sucky tech skills instead of marksman, warp, and singularity. Meanwhile the Engineer (as mentioned) didn't scale and the Infiltrator got all the cool parts of the Soldier's kit - Marksman, Perma-Immunity to make you almost unkillable, the Sniper Rocket Launcher (Sniper Rifle + HE ammo + Assassination + damage barrel = ridiculous damage). And they had the best engineer skills - the ones that meant you could pick party members freely, and not the medical ones or the one that only worked on Geth before rank 12. Meanwhile ME2 how much fun it was depended on how much of a cover shooter you were playing. The ME2 Vanguard was playing pinball so was awesome. The ME2 Infiltrator kinda was - when they weren't playing "melee infiltrator", loaded up with cryo ammo and shooting enemies in the back (and then exploding them with an incinerator). The Engineer getting two pets rather than one in ME3 was huge. And the remaining three were playing normal cover shooters. The thing is I'm pretty sure that the ME2 designers didn't intend to make the melee infiltrator - or have the vanguard be a pinball machine. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand (to its credit) was prepared to take the emergent playstyles and run with them. I'd be interested in seeing what you could do with novas and the like in ME2...
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Mar 14, 2021 04:43
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Android Blues posted:It's all a little janky but it's almost a lampshade hanging justification for being able to make Morinth recruitable without having to write full squadmate reactivity for her, which was most likely the only way such a niche choice could be implemented without it being a silly amount of work for little gain. That's because ME2 got the recruitment completely backwards. The Illusive Man should want you to recruit Morinth, and Morinth's loyalty mission should be trying to protect her from the fanatic trying to kill her for what she is. Who just happens to be her mother - and reveal that, bad as you thought she was she's far far worse. Samara offers to swear the loyalty oath not to help but to actually kill Morinth. This actually gives you an interesting dilemma - protect the complete evil psychopath who's a member of your crew, or replace her with the cop trying to stop her.
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Mar 31, 2021 21:40
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Dammit I don't want to do a whole trilogy playthrough but I'm really tempted. I forget, is Vanguard or Adept better in ME1? Honestly there's not much in it. Adepts get two extra powers; Singularity's awesome and Stasis is kinda dull. On the other hand the Vanguard gets better armour, shotguns (if you want them; you probably don't because marksman is OP), and Assault Training. Assault Training gives you adrenaline burst so you can barrier, use lift and throw, throw out a warp, and then do it all again. There's an argument that the vanguard is a better biotic combatant than the adept (especially at low levels when you can unlock marksman easily for the vanguard). The biggest difference is probably at early levels when the vanguard starts with pistols and fitness unlocked, while the adept starts with basic armour and barrier unlocked.
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Apr 24, 2021 02:44
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Cythereal posted:I'll be going engineer, myself. Engineer in ME3 is the most fun I've ever had in a shooter, and made it one of the very few games I beat on the hardest difficulty because it was simply fun. You have an endless bag of tricks with a tool for every situation, and the one thing enemies can do that you can't directly counter (centurion smoke grenades), that's what your gun with a thermal scope is for. The thing is that the engineer in ME1 sucks. It's awesome in ME3 and pretty good in ME2 - but the ME1 engineer is terrible. They're far the squishiest class in the game, being stuck in light armour and with electronics only adding 30 points to their shield/level for a total of 270 shield bonus at max rank; a level 1 barrier adds 400 to the user's shields. And their attack powers both in terms of crowd control and fun in the first game fall far short of biotics; they're just explosions with a CC effect doing 50/100/150 damage each. (It's also really not worth getting electronics or decryption at above level 9 because the bonuses are so small). The worst thing is just how much better the ME1 Infiltrator is than the Engineer. At low level it gets the electronics/decryption/damping combination of the engineer. It doesn't have medicine (bleh) or AI hacking (awesome ... when facing Geth). But in exchange it gets sniper rifles (fun - and the sniper rifle with HE ammo is the nearest to Incinerate you're going to get) and fitness (the skill that makes soldiers utterly indestructible at high levels in ME1). On the other hand the ME1 Infiltrator isn't an Infiltrator as we'd come to know them; they don't get a tactical cloak. So it's legit to play an Infiltrator through ME1 and call them an Engineer, switching your paperwork in ME2. One of my hopes that I don't expect (other than from modders) for the remaster is to give optional updated versions of the classes for ME1, allowing the infiltrator tactical cloak, the vanguard biotic charge, and the engineer drones to give them their distinct identities.
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Apr 24, 2021 16:41
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Cythereal posted:Engineer is not a support class from ME2 onwards. Engineer is an elemental space wizard here to electrocute, burn, poison, freeze, explode, and just maybe shoot everything that tickles your fancy. And they bring their own squad with them, especially in ME3 where you get the turret as well as the drone.
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Apr 25, 2021 01:44
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Pattonesque posted:Mars was good, you get some cool setpiece battles, you unravel a lil mystery, the visuals of the incoming Martian sandstorm are v. cool, you get some nice character-building moments with Liara and Ashley/Kaidan (although they remain a little too paranoid imo), James Vega crashes a shuttle into a robot. It's good stuff. Mars was good for the first three quarters. Chasing down the robot then gunning down the robot in a quicktime event were both terrible. Earth, and particularly that scripted "You must use up all your ammo before the Normandy lands" were annoying as tutorials go.
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Apr 27, 2021 09:43
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SoldadoDeTone posted:The only classes I've never played in Mass Effect are sentinel and engineer. In your experiences which one is more fun for a full series playthrough? Engineer in ME1 is the suckiest class and with luck will be rebalanced; the tech powers simply do not scale. The ME1 Infiltrator can basically do everything the Engineer can and has the endgame of an utter tank thanks to Fitness being the Soldier's tank power. ME2 Engineer is a space wizard. ME3 Engineer is an awesome space wizard. I'd recommend pretending the cloakless ME1 Infiltrator is an Engineer (because without the cloak they aren't really an infiltrator) and going Engineer 2 & 3 Sentinel in ME1 is the suckest biotic class - which means it's the fourth best class. (Loses to Adept, Vanguard, and Infiltrator). It gets the worst parts of both engineering (First Aid + Medicine) and Biotics (Stasis). It's not even an especially good tank. It has the most shields - but this is a long way from being the most survivable (which the soldier holds by a whisker from the infiltrator thanks to immunity and perma-immunity builds). Sentinel in ME2 can facetank rather than play cover based shooter. I'm not quite sure what the point of the ME3 Sentinel is - it's a kinda space wizard build. So in conclusion Infiltrator in ME1 and Engineer in 2 and 3. axeil posted:I have no idea what classes to pick. I think I was boring and was a soldier in all three games in my original playthrough. Triple Vanguard is awesome; in ME1 you're a space wizard who can throw people around, and in ME2/3 Always Be Charging. Triple Infiltrator is great - especially when you realise that the ME2/3 infiltrator has cryo ammo and you can subvert the cover system by going invisible and shooting enemies in the back. Infiltrator into double engineer is turning into a space wizard. Triple Adept is a throw people around space wizard - but ME1 Adept > ME2/3 adept.
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May 11, 2021 21:59
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The ME3 ending works as is ... mapping to the right hand half of the dialogue wheel. It's a perfectly consistent ending for a Shep that ended up with Wrex dead and genocide on the Quarians or the Geth (I don't care which). What it entirely lacks is an upper left blue or a lower left red option. I know what lower left red should have been; Shephard signalling "Now, Joker!" and Joker shooting the Conduit. Cue Mass Effect Relay explosion that takes out Shep, the Allied fleet, the Reaper fleet, Citadel, and Earth - but everything else survives (including the Normandy, jumping to Hyperspace). The Renegade making the hard choice. I just don't know what a satisfying and non-cloying upper left blue could have been.
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May 12, 2021 03:30
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Infiltrator if you like popping heads in slow motion, Sentinel if you like having a ton of powers and utility and having a healthy orange glow like certain former presidents. Engineer has a ton of powers in 2 to be fair - and the throw/warp combo of the sentinel is not good because you need someone else's powers for warp to detonate. And Infiltrator can play with the cover system by turning invisible and shooting enemies in the back with cryo ammo.
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May 14, 2021 02:50
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Huh. That's a good change. The number of missions in ME1 you need to play with each of the companions for the achievement has been dropped from 45 to 5, making it a whole lot more practical. It's also worth doing with Wrex ASAP unless you're playing a soldier because regenerating health is huge.
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May 17, 2021 11:51
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Knuc U Kinte posted:Do you get abilities for bringing squad mates in missions? Generally pretty trivial ones. +10% damage protection if you've brought Ashley enough, 1hp/s regeneration for Wrex, and I think the other four are +10% power to two skills each.
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May 17, 2021 16:01
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For me the ME1 romance choice is simple. Two characters are in my chain of command. They are therefore undateable as either a paragon or a renegade who isn't an all round scumbag. It's Liara or no one in ME1.
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May 17, 2021 19:54
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Kobal2 posted:Fun is of course very subjective, but I first ran ME2 as an infil way back when and I liked it fine. It's a bit sedate though - most fights you'll just be huddling behind cover at the far end of the arena, popping pistol shots here and there, waiting for cloak to cool down then pop up, violently explode a head with your antimateriel rifle, fire off an overload or direct your squad for a bit, rinse repeat. The trick with the semi-melee infiltrator is to run behind the enemy (classes are always best when you aren't playing cover based shooter) and then hit them with an SMG firing cryo ammo. Not so good on Insanity where everything has armour - but SMGs strip shields and fire enough bullets to proc freeze, and at least you've sniper rifles and incinerate for armour. It's high risk high reward, with classic infiltrator as a fallback strategy.
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May 19, 2021 00:53
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PunkBoy posted:I'm thinking about romancing Jack in 2, but I have this memory of her romance being really weird/creepy. Am I misremembering it? Possibly. The main thing that I remember about the Jack romance is that there's a trap option early on where she suggests the two of you gently caress - and if you take it she'll think you're like everyone else so actual romance is locked out.
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May 19, 2021 16:01
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axeil posted:As another point to that, when poo poo came to a head between the Batarians and Humans the Council decided to stay "neutral" but basically back the Humans. Whether this is because humanity, for all its ambitiousness, doesn't go around enslaving people and causing headaches is left for the reader to decide. When a bunch of noobs fights your warrior caste/race to a draw you know if you give them a generation to prepare for the next one they are going to roll you. At that point you basically have three options. (1) is to go to a full war footing now, Asari, Salarians, and Krogan as well as Turians. And you might find the Krogan and the Batarians playing "the enemy of my enemy" if you do that with the Krogan in particular wanting to get paid to fight against the people who gave then the Genophage. Besides the Asari councillor is a centrist and is almost certainly not going to risk Asari fleets if possible. (2) is to co-opt them, which might upset the Turians but not so much as losing a war would and it's pretty obvious that the Turians are over extended. (3) is for the Salarians to do something like the Genophage - which becomes easier if you're part co-opting them because you at least have their language, their maps, and their public records. And of course if you co-opt the humans you make it obvious they are the new favourites - both to flatter them and to try to prevent them getting allies like the Volus. And they can handle the Batarians. It keeps them busy and gets the Batarians out of your hair - and if they leave the Citadel so much the better.
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May 20, 2021 00:44
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Well that's a balance tweak I don't think that anyone has mentioned in ME1. Immunity is now only 6 seconds regardless of how much you've levelled Fitness - no more Perma-immunity builds (it used to be 10/15/20s base). But it actively blocks more damage than it did in ME1 (from 50/60/80% to 75%/85%/90%).
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May 20, 2021 16:22
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Codependent Poster posted:I will not stand for this Mark Meer slander. It depends if you play game 1 or not. Hale is far better in game 1 - but if you decide it's a skippable prologue Meer's Shep is good in 2 and 3.
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May 21, 2021 02:34
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I haven't played Andromeda, and don't want to, but I'm curious to see how it fails again and again by comparison with prior games. I didn't find it so much failed as didn't match the high points. I mean objectively the driving and procedurally generated planets are both better in ME:A than ME:1 and the side content doesn't reuse all of what? Four building layouts. Also there's honestly more to your teammates than in ME1 (getting loyalty missions helps). And I didn't find the Kett framing story significantly worse than the ME2 "Collectors are abducting humans to break them down and turn them into a 'Human Reaper'" although there's no 'Assuming Direct Control'. And let's face it neither ME1 nor ME2 has great facial animation. Of course if you're playing ME1 for the Mako's driving and uncharted planets or ME2 to fight the Collectors I seriously question your taste.
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May 26, 2021 11:20
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Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:I agree with Waltzing Along. Now that aiming and firing a gun doesn't feel completely different between ME1 and ME2, the primary difference is that all your skills share a cooldown in 2 (which just plain feels bad) and there are more layers of defenses to remove. The latter sometimes feels satisfying but it also means that unless you're a Vanguard you're going to be squatting behind cover more often. There's another major difference between 1 and 2. In 1 the difference between the classes is more or less what you throw at the enemy in between shooting people, and making sure you bring enough engineering talent. In 2 the classes all get signature powers and feel different to play; the Vanguard's Biotic Charge is not like a soldier or an adept. Wolfsheim posted:-I'm playing a soldier so I went with the unique assault rifle upgrade but I genuinely can't tell if it's better than the Mattock, the range is pretty bad The Mattock is DLC from the overpowered Firepower Pack. quote:-what is cryo ammo even for Your allies to be able to crowd control. Also occasionally for melee infiltrating. quote:-in Kasumi's loyalty mission what accent is the villain trying and failing to do Space South African I think.
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May 31, 2021 22:52
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: the post-Leviathan Destroy/Control/Synthesis is a perfectly fine ending for the right hand side of the dialogue wheel and the whole thing is a decent enough ending for Commander Above Average. Someone who got Wrex or Eve killed or had to make a choice between the Quarians and the Geth. What it's missing are the upper left blue options and the lower left red. And I've yet to hear a good upper left blue ending.
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Jun 3, 2021 00:39
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Wingnut Ninja posted:You know in your heart an upper left ending would have been Shepard saying a few lines about how this cycle is different, and the reapers say "gosh, you make a good point, we were so wrong" and they all fly away and everyone goes home for tea and medals. I know my lower left is blowing up the Conduit (as it's a Mass Relay), Arrival-style. It's not big enough to wipe out the entire solar system - but it'll take out all the Reapers, the Citadel, the combined allied fleet, and Earth. Winning at any cost I think makes for a good ending. But yes, that's why upper left is hard to write. I can't get something that doesn't feel cloying.
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Jun 3, 2021 10:51
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nine-gear crow posted:Omega: After the Citadel Coup The Leviathan missions have Banshees as an enemy type - which are a nasty reveal on Thessia. Do it after Thessia.
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Jun 6, 2021 20:01
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Pattonesque posted:Banshees show up in Samara's mission IIRC? You're right. For some reason I thought that was part of the Thessia collection of missions rather than between Citadel II and the Rannoch collection.
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Jun 6, 2021 20:43
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CapnAndy posted:All of that is exactly true and it's the product of really good, subtle worldbuilding that never gets any attention called to it in any of the games: every other race in the galaxy, either due to biology, culture, or both, in some degree or another, arranges themselves in a set heirarchy. The Asari follow the Matriarchs. The Turians are all about who has what rank. The Drell follow the Hanar. The Hanar are a theocracy and value politeness and "correct" speech. Elcor are herd animals. Salarians imprint on Dalatrasses at birth and defer to them. The Volus are fiercely clan-based. Quarians have a strong drive to do what's right for the collective society. This was an excellent post with one slight correction. It's not every other race in the galaxy; it's every other race we see that is accepted by the Council. You mentioned one of the exceptions (the Krogans) but there are two others; the Vorcha are competitive clan based with the clans and individuals fighting for dominance and the Batarians are caste-based with a hegemony that seems to be using every trick in the book to cling on to a group where the individuals can be almost as distinctive as humans. I'm not sure where the Yahg qualify - they are pack animals who fight then they submit until the next challenge and consider equality alien. And we see almost nothing of the Raloi except a couple of news reports (their plan of defence against the Reapers is to retreat to their planet, destroy their satellites, and pretend to be pre-spacefaring). Of course the only one of these we see in ME1 are the Krogan.
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Jun 7, 2021 11:25
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I'd forgotten how tedious the derelict Reaper could be if you didn't bring someone with Lift Field. I may have to set the difficulty right down because kiting away from armoured melee hordes is simply boring and annoying. And yes I know ABC works - I'm playing a surprisingly melee-heavy infiltrator.
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Jun 8, 2021 03:01
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I don't understand people who don't get reinstated as Spectres in ME2. Even my most renegade Shepherd thinks "For ten seconds of making nice they're giving me how much power?" even if they only ever use it on Thane's loyalty mission as far as I recall.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:59
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I'd forgotten how much better mechanically ME3 was than the two previous games even if the story and Kai Leng let it down more than a little. Not even sure now there's an actual choice of guns in ME1 the combat in ME2 is any better other than the Vanguard and Infiltrator classes being meaningfully different from the rest.
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Jun 14, 2021 02:59
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Cythereal posted:So now that I'm well into ME3, as this thread's resident Engineer evangelist, here's a quick rundown on what powers to pick as a new Engineer. I couldn't disagree more with about half that guide. If you're going to do things like that then you might as well go either Sentinel for the better weight capacity and because Warp explodes barriers or Infiltrator again for the better weight capacity, for the sniper time dilation, and you have incinerate and disruptor ammo right there. Oh, and because the tactical cloak is awesome both for defence and for trolling (running up to an enemy for melee or with sticky bombs is hilarious) and you can shred shields with disruptor ammo. If you want to be an actual engineer what makes you one is the drone and the turret, the two of which make you more able to disrupt the cover based shooter elements of ME3 than anything except a vanguard. They are also where you get most of your crowd control and, as such, rockets are a poor choice. Of the two your drone is easier to use (and has an absurdly short recharge time). The damage is nothing to write home about and both shock and detonate are pretty pointless - but it forces enemies out of cover and can even turn Atlas mechs round. And it roams around on its own. There are few times when even at a relatively low level you shouldn't be opening with the sentry drone even before you've worked out where everyone is. The turret on the other hand is a killer and should be the very first thing you max out. Drop it behind enemies and it'll machine gun into their back. I use cryo ammo because the occasional cryo explosion is hilarious - and the flamethrower does quite a lot of damage. Shock's pointless because the best control condition is dead - and if the machine guns don't get them the flamethrower will (the argument for rockets is because you don't occasionally have to move the thing). And given both drones are awesome so is drone mastery. As for the rest? Sabotage is indeed a one point wonder at least until you get to the Geth and as for Cryo the best control condition is indeed dead. Overload and Incinerate are complimentary powers; overload nukes shields and most barriers while incinerate deals with armour. Incinerate 3 + Overload 3 >> Incinerate 5 or Overload 5. Incinerate's your primary power for killing hardened targets like Brutes, Ravagers, and Banshees and should therefore be specced for pure damage. Overload's a shield/barrier-stripper that if you have line of sight can't be dodged; some Cerberus troopers roll out of the way of incinerate although now I come to think of it they can't do that at point blank range so I should possibly go for the recharge reduction rather than this panic button. The two things missing from the engineer kit are a panic button to either restore shields or turn invisible or something and an ammo power.
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Jun 16, 2021 14:22
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TheGreySpectre posted:I know everyone goes on about how the combat in ME2 is so much better than the combat in ME1, but I must just be the odd cat with stupid opinions because I like the ME1 combat better. It seems more varied. I feel like I have a lot more abilities to use both for me and my squadmates, more combinations of interesting combinations powers and more freedom to move around ME1 was the game that was really improved by the Legendary Edition. In the original version of ME1 all weapons within a class behaved the same way, with the only things that changed being the accuracy, the heat, and the damage. Also you were only proficient in the guns you had class skills for and were really inaccurate with the other three. Oh, and they reworked Immunity so it blocks more damage but only lasts 6 seconds rather than up to 20. There were far too many late game damage sponges (like most krogan) whose health bar turned white and would then take a ludicrous amount of fire to drop. I definitely agree that ME1 LE combat is better than ME2 combat. Randallteal posted:Class abilities got a lot better in 2 (or maybe just Vanguards) but yeah Ammo management's stupid (excuse me, disposable heatsinks or whatever). In 2 the classes got signature abilities. This did amazing things for the Vanguard with charge and excellent things for the Infiltrator with cloak (the ME1 Infiltrator is a strong class but not that charismatic). On the other hand classes using layered powers, especially Adepts but IMO also Sentinels got actively worse because they all moved onto the same cooldown so e.g. lift/throw combos became a lot harder to pull off (and sentinels lost Lift into the bargain) while Tech Armour wasn't conceptual so much as emergent from the Electronics/Barrier combination. And the Engineer is just bad in both 1 and 2 and wouldn't get good until 3 with the turret and the tech combos.
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Aug 11, 2021 01:46
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FoolyCharged posted:Except for sniper rifles. Those still had enough damage to one shot everything with pin point accuracy, it's just that while you were scoped in Shepard drunkenly waved them around to a comical degree, so you had to be patient and wait for the crosshairs to sway back over your target while sniping. In one way the change to Immunity is a pity; the Soldier and Infiltrator both had a fairly easy perma-Immunity build and I think the changes mean that I'd now recommend the sentinel rather than the infiltrator in ME1 for the best beginner's all round experience with complete flexibility in party building although I'd recommend changing in ME2 to vanguard or infiltrator. And yes, you could use sniper rifles (preferably with high explosive ammo) unskilled.
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Aug 11, 2021 03:35
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FoolyCharged posted:Toning down the enemy combat barks in 1 was LE's greatest sin. Has someone fixed that with a mod yet? Or at least modded in the great Cerberus battlecry of "Taking Casualties!" into ME1.
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Aug 11, 2021 11:58
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edogawa rando posted:ME3 has a lot of problems, for all the fun that it actually is. There's a game made up of really good bits, but at times, it can't stop getting in its own way, like the heavy-handed shift in how Cerberus acts between 2 and 3 (in all fairness, how they're portrayed in 3 is very much in line with what we saw in ME1). Cerberus in ME2 is running a Potemkin Village on Shep, deliberately recruiting people including Joker and Chakwas who Shep could work with and cherry picking people like Kelly Chambers who (according to deleted backstory) got into Cerberus by catching TIM's eye, not sleeping with him, then being rescued by Cerberus from Batarians. Miranda managed to mix competence (in short supply in Cerberus) with needing protection and giving her loyalty in exchange, but still having morality. And the only Cerberus member Jacob knowingly worked with before joining Cerberus was Miranda. Of that set even Miranda wasn't really up to push the bounds of unethical research too far. Meanwhile Daniels and Donnely were never really members of Cerberus; they were recruited some time after the Battle of the Citadel, presumably because all Cerberus' own engineers had been involved in something highly unethical and might let things slip. And then there were the aliens. Can you think of better PR for Cerberus than their most visible ship containing aliens? And almost all of them were people TIM might be afraid of. Thane Krios was both one of the best assassins in the galaxy and had developed a moral streak and turned into a loose cannon. I can imagine TIM fearing Thane might go after him. Likewise Samara. It might not have been in the dossier but TIM almost certainly knew who he was and that was a straight present for Shep. Even Jack? Recruiting her both neutralises her and Jack is not a people person, meaning that she'd present the anti-Cerberus case badly. Even at the cost of both Shep and the Normandy The Lazarus Project was stunningly successful. TIM literally reversed death; how much money could he raise from billionaires to try to repeat that for them? It defused the claims of anti-alien sentiment when the biggest Cerberus project had aliens very publicly involved - while showing humans that Cerberus was helping them when the Alliance wasn't. It used either freelancers or people Cerberus couldn't use on the dodgier projects, And the only thing of value it cost TIM that he had at the start of the project was Miranda. Oh, and of course Cerberus could get past the Omega 4 Relay. They copied all the files before EDI got loose. Of course Cerberus presented itself as well as possible on its great PR project while remaining incredibly shady elsewhere. "There are multiple groups in the organisation and it has some PR" isn't changing the characterisation that much. quote:Still not as lovely and tryhard as THE EDGIEST EDGEBOI IN THE EDGY-VERSE Kai "EDGY EDGY EDGE EDGE EDGE" Leng. So edgy I almost cut myself on his edgy edge. The best description I've seen of characters like that is that he's a pizza cutter; all edge, no point.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:04
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