39 réponses à ce sujet

[NICKjnp]

I love biotics in ME1 and ME2.  The reason I made this thread is to pose questions as to why the devs designed the biotic classes and powers the way they did in ME2.  Please don't turn this into a debate as to why certain classes are better than others or a video thread.  This is a thread where we can post questions that the devs will hopefully answer.  (I'll update the list with your questions in the original post so the devs don't have to navigate the entire thread)

First Question: Shockwave.  Why is a power that is so great on veteran and below a power that is practically useless on higher difficulties?

Second Question: General Powers.  If you are trying to make a unique game based on abilities, how do you end up with a game that is not based on abilities?

Third Question: Defenses.  Why do armor, shields and barriers make every ability i have useless?

Fourth Question: Power Recharge.  Why can i use throw and not use medigel or overload untill throw has recharged?

Fifth Question: Medigel.  Why does my adept play more like a soldier instead of an adept, and why does a soldier with slam play almost exactly like an adept?

Sixth Question: General.  Why is the adept weeker on higher difficulties while the soldier class is still the strongest class and doesn't have a harder time on the higher difficulties?

Modifié par NICKjnp, 26 août 2010 - 05:33 .

[OniGanon]

If you ever used max Singularity or Nemesis Lift in ME1, you should already know the answer.

[NICKjnp]

Thanks for your opinion... but the question is still there.

[sinosleep]

I'm usually the first one to defend ME 2's take on biotics but shockwave is particularly weak on insanity. It's crowd control function is too out of control to be much use (you never know where enemies will land, they don't stay out of it for a particularly long time) and the damage it causes is negligible so you can't really use it for that either. Powers like pull provide better (longer lasting and more predictable) crowd control while throw is better from a damage and cool down perspective. Shockwave is kind of the odd one out.

Modifié par sinosleep, 25 août 2010 - 03:57 .

[JaegerBane]

sinosleep wrote...

I'm usually the first one to defend ME 2's take on biotics but shockwave is particularly weak on insanity. It's crowd control function is too out of control to be much use (you never know where enemies will land, they don't stay out of it for a particularly long time) and the damage it causes is negligible so you can't really use it for that either. Powers like pull provide better (longer lasting and more predictable) crowd control while throw is better from a damage and cool down perspective. Shockwave is kind of the odd one out.

Shockwave is more of a victim of how the difficulty levels were set out rather than any bad design in of itself. On Normal (i.e. baseline difficulty) it's worth every bit of of it's 6-sec cooldown - hell, it can practically take out a swarm of husks by itself.

[Bozorgmehr]

It's weird though that enemy Shockwave (Scion) is very powerful - it rips through shields like a knife through butter, but when Shepard or his/her teammates use it (Insanity) it's nothing even close to that. I also don't like you have to target Shockwave - it would be better to be able to use it like Cone of Cold in DAO (area attack instead of attacking a specific target)

[sinosleep]

JaegerBane wrote...

Shockwave is more of a victim of how the difficulty levels were set out rather than any bad design in of itself. On Normal (i.e. baseline difficulty) it's worth every bit of of it's 6-sec cooldown - hell, it can practically take out a swarm of husks by itself.

Thing is though on normal pull or throw field will take out those same husks even quicker since they don't have defenses and both powers have quicker cooldowns and the same instakill ability since anything that takes husks off their feet instakills them. Same thing applies to singularity. The only real advantage for shockwave is that it's a fire and forget spell (goes through cover instead of around it) so that if the cool down was better it would actually be more spammable than any other adept power.

Modifié par sinosleep, 25 août 2010 - 04:58 .

[Simbacca]

sinosleep wrote...

I'm usually the first one to defend ME 2's take on biotics but shockwave is particularly weak on insanity...

Same here.  I've always felt it should also do some damage to shields like the Scions.  Maybe Heavy Shockwave with all the upgrades would remove a little more than half the shields of any trooper enemy in it's path at lvl 30.  That way it's not completely a shield solution like Overload but not completely useless on Insanity.

[Bozorgmehr]

sinosleep wrote...

Thing is though on normal pull or throw field will take out those same husks even quicker since they don't have defenses and both powers have quicker cooldowns and the same instakill ability since anything that takes husks off their feet instakills them. Same thing applies to singularity. The only real advantage for shockwave is that it's a fire and forget spell (goes through cover instead of around it) so that if the cool down was better it would actually be more spammable than any other adept power.

Maybe so, but the first time I played ME2 (playing with imported lvl 69 ME1 Adept) I surfed my way through on Shockwaves. Setting up a SIngularity followed by a Heavy Shockwave frome Jack is one of the most hilarious things to watch - enemies are being sent in all possible directions; great stuff. I really bumbed my head during my 2nd playthrough (also Adept) on Insanity; same move didn't work

I agree with cooldown - on par with Pull and Throw plus a fast(er) animation would make Shockwave useful on Insanity.

[JaegerBane]

sinosleep wrote...

JaegerBane wrote...

Shockwave is more of a victim of how the difficulty levels were set out rather than any bad design in of itself. On Normal (i.e. baseline difficulty) it's worth every bit of of it's 6-sec cooldown - hell, it can practically take out a swarm of husks by itself.

Thing is though on normal pull or throw field will take out those same husks even quicker since they don't have defenses and both powers have quicker cooldowns and the same instakill ability since anything that takes husks off their feet instakills them. Same thing applies to singularity. The only real advantage for shockwave is that it's a fire and forget spell (goes through cover instead of around it) so that if the cool down was better it would actually be more spammable than any other adept power.

They'd work on whatever you targeted, yeah. The advantage Shockwave has is that it essentially wtfpwns *everything* that isn't packin' armour or shields within your line of sight in the direction you cast it. It's effectively the same as the sum of Pulls required to cover the corridor that the things are coming down.

Add to the fact that it creeps over and pulses through cover and it'd essentially like several Throws.

[JaegerBane]

Bozorgmehr wrote...
Maybe so, but the first time I played ME2 (playing with imported lvl 69 ME1 Adept) I surfed my way through on Shockwaves. Setting up a SIngularity followed by a Heavy Shockwave frome Jack is one of the most hilarious things to watch - enemies are being sent in all possible directions; great stuff. I really bumbed my head during my 2nd playthrough (also Adept) on Insanity; same move didn't work

I agree with cooldown - on par with Pull and Throw plus a fast(er) animation would make Shockwave useful on Insanity.

Personally I think it should do a lot more damage a la Scions. That would make some sense out of Jack's passive and it would make it worth it's heavy cooldown on Hardcore and above.

[sinosleep]

JaegerBane wrote...

They'd work on whatever you targeted,
yeah. The advantage Shockwave has is that it essentially wtfpwns
*everything* that isn't packin' armour or shields within your line of
sight in the direction you cast it. It's effectively the same as the sum
of Pulls required to cover the corridor that the things are coming
down.

Add to the fact that it creeps over and pulses through
cover and it'd essentially like several Throws.

It's width is 3.50 compared to 3.00 for pull and throw fields respectively and you can still miss a target with the deselection issue. It's certainly more forgiving since it goes through cover but it wouldn't take 4 throw/pull fields to catch up to it in terms of enemies affected.

JaegerBane wrote...

Personally I think it should do a lot more damage a la Scions. That would make some sense out of Jack's passive and it would make it worth it's heavy cooldown on Hardcore and above.

I'm with you on this. When I said that if the cool down was shorter that it would be the most spammable of adept abilities I didn't mean that that's what I thought that they should do. I just pointed it out cause since it's fire and forget there's not much aiming to be done. With the other powers if you are in a hurry sometimes you'll get a bad angle on and wind up missing your target cause your power hits cover either due to the curser deslecting your desired target or just getting a bad angle on the projectile. Since shockwave goes through cover a quicker CD would make it easily spammable. I don;t think that's a good solution though becuase you keep all the advantages while losing nothing.

Jaegerbane's idea though I could get behind. Keep the CD long, but make it at least anti-shield to make up for it.

Modifié par sinosleep, 25 août 2010 - 05:56 .

[Pacifien]

I really do think none of the powers should be judged beyond Normal difficulty. The developers tell you that the game was geared around that difficulty, so all powers as seen on that difficulty are how they're supposed to work. The real question is how much thought did the developers put into the higher difficulties. They designed the game and powers around Normal difficulty, then they want to toss in an extra challenge to those who want it. The way they went about it was not to tweak any of the player's powers, but to give all the enemies a defense boost and enable them to use their powers more often.

So in thinking about the biotic powers, none of them fail on Normal difficulty. I might wonder why the developers created Shockwave when you can use Throw -- in what way is Shockwave a better method than Throw? Longer range perhaps?

Haven't been following up on the Shadow Broker DLC news, so don't know if it contains any tweaks to the biotic system about which the developers had hinted. Still, I hope they take difficulty levels into consideration when designing the powers, making sure they have their uses across all levels, even if the use might be altered.

[AntiChri5]

I absoloutely hate Shockwave. It is the most useless power in the game. Giving it some decent damage would be a godsend.

[MuteSpeech]

I personally find it to be a situational skill. Have enemies near a wall/ledge? Shockwave them over the edge to their death.

[AntiChri5]

MuteSpeech wrote...

I personally find it to be a situational skill. Have enemies near a wall/ledge? Shockwave them over the edge to their death.

Except that there is as much chance they will go toward you.

Or to the left.

Or to the right.

[jwalker]

The only real use of shockwave on insanity is with Jack to get someone out of cover. They don't take damage, but they do get staggered and you can see their heads, which is good for sniping.



But not really worth it to bring Jack just for this. Besides, the animation es quite long and must be done out of cover. She takes a lot of damage.

[jwalker]

Pacifien wrote...

Haven't been following up on the Shadow Broker DLC news, so don't know if it contains any tweaks to the biotic system about which the developers had hinted. Still, I hope they take difficulty levels into consideration when designing the powers, making sure they have their uses across all levels, even if the use might be altered.

Can that be done with a DLC ? I think that kind of change would involved some patch, updating some main game files...

[Simbacca]

sinosleep wrote...

Jaegerbane's idea though I could get behind. Keep the CD long, but make it at least anti-shield to make up for it.

I think you mean me, lol.  At least, I was the only one to specifically say damage to shields but not a strong as Overload above.

Still even with it, I'm not sure it would worth taking on insanity considering how Shockwave's placement in the Adept skill tree restricts what else the player can max.  More options are always good though, not every Adept player likes taking a tech power (Energy Drain) as a bonus, even if it would still be superior when looking solely at the anti-shield qualities.

[AntiChri5]

Simbacca wrote...

sinosleep wrote...

Jaegerbane's idea though I could get behind. Keep the CD long, but make it at least anti-shield to make up for it.

I think you mean me, lol.  At least, I was the only one to specifically say damage to shields but not a strong as Overload above.

Still even with it, I'm not sure it would worth taking on insanity considering how Shockwave's placement in the Adept skill tree restricts what else the player can max.  More options are always good though, not every Adept player likes taking a tech power (Energy Drain) as a bonus, even if it would still be superior when looking solely at the anti-shield qualities.

If there is anyone Shockwave needs to apologise to, its the Vanguard.

Did you know, that to use the pull ability you have to spend seven points?

Two levels of charge, costs three points and unlocks Shockwave (granted, all Vanguards are getting charge anyway so this doesnt matter).

Then, two levels of Shockwave costs three points and unlocks pull. This is the problem. Having to put points in a useless skill to unlock a good one.

[PsyrenY]

MuteSpeech wrote...

I personally find it to be a situational skill. Have enemies near a wall/ledge? Shockwave them over the edge to their death.

Why would I use it for that, rather than Throw/Concussive shot?

[jwalker]

AntiChri5 wrote...

Did you know, that to use the pull ability you have to spend seven points?

Two levels of charge, costs three points and unlocks Shockwave (granted, all Vanguards are getting charge anyway so this doesnt matter).

Then, two levels of Shockwave costs three points and unlocks pull. This is the problem. Having to put points in a useless skill to unlock a good one.

In the Adept, Pull unlocks Shockwave. In the Vanguard, Shockwave unlocks Pull. Complete nonsense. And you're right, the Vanguard hurts with this. 

It would be really great having pull field without neglecting other power....

[PsyrenY]

AntiChri5 wrote...

Did you know, that to use the pull ability you have to spend seven points?

Two levels of charge, costs three points and unlocks Shockwave (granted, all Vanguards are getting charge anyway so this doesnt matter).

Then, two levels of Shockwave costs three points and unlocks pull. This is the problem. Having to put points in a useless skill to unlock a good one.

As you pointed out , really you are only spending 3 points (not 7) because all VGs would max Charge anyway, so it's not so bad. I do agree that prereqs shouldn't suck though, but it hasn't hurt the VG's popularity any.

[AntiChri5]

Optimystic_X wrote...

AntiChri5 wrote...

Did you know, that to use the pull ability you have to spend seven points?

Two levels of charge, costs three points and unlocks Shockwave (granted, all Vanguards are getting charge anyway so this doesnt matter).

Then, two levels of Shockwave costs three points and unlocks pull. This is the problem. Having to put points in a useless skill to unlock a good one.

As you pointed out , really you are only spending 3 points (not 7) because all VGs would max Charge anyway, so it's not so bad. I do agree that prereqs shouldn't suck though, but it hasn't hurt the VG's popularity any.

Its still three points im not getting back.

[PsyrenY]

AntiChri5 wrote...

Optimystic_X wrote...

AntiChri5 wrote...

Did you know, that to use the pull ability you have to spend seven points?

Two levels of charge, costs three points and unlocks Shockwave (granted, all Vanguards are getting charge anyway so this doesnt matter).

Then, two levels of Shockwave costs three points and unlocks pull. This is the problem. Having to put points in a useless skill to unlock a good one.

As you pointed out , really you are only spending 3 points (not 7) because all VGs would max Charge anyway, so it's not so bad. I do agree that prereqs shouldn't suck though, but it hasn't hurt the VG's popularity any.

Its still three points im not getting back.

Again, I agree with your point, I was just correcting your math.
When quantifying an opportunity cost, you can't add in the decisions you would have made either way.