530 réponses à ce sujet

[upsettingshorts]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...
Spoken like someone who doesn't get it either.

We'll see.

AngryFrozenWater wrote...
There is no info about the stats of weapons, armor, and other items, available in the game. At best some random number is given which is supposed to modify some secret stat. How are people supposed to find out which item is better? Sniff a gun? And some guns require some non-standard way of firing. Maybe that is fun, but chances are yuo'll never find out, because how to fire those is never explained in-game. Could be handy in advance, you know. In case you might run into an enemy.

I'm about to surprise you:

I agree with you completely.  There should have been much more information at the hands of the player to inform on their decision of which weapon to select.

However, the differences are there - I'm not inventing them out of thin air - not only are they detailed in the game's code, they become immediately apparent after using them.  But of course there ought to have been some explanation of what to expect before using them.

But that's a GUI issue, not an inventory or weapon differences issue.

AngryFrozenWater wrote...
What are people like Sarah are supposed to think about a crappy system like that? That it is the best thing since sliced bread? She could be right about the DPS. She has no way of knowing in-game, Yes there is a thread on the forums that is supposed to reveal this secret data, but there is no information whatsoever in-game. There's no paper manual either. Is this how we need to play games: Pause the game, open your browser, google up stuff, and continue?

What you're describing is a GUI issue.  You're not disputing my assertion that the weapons are different - like Sarah did, just that it is much more difficult than it ought to be to choose from between them.  

AngryFrozenWater wrote...
Puhlease! (Doesn't that sound cool. I even managed to add an exclamation mark and added italics! I wanted to make you feel dumb, just like you did to Sarah. Did I succeed? All of course with an arbirary tongue in cheek).

I've had issues with Sarah before, not the least of which is how casually condescending she is towards people with opposing viewpoints.   She disputes this for what it's worth.  I made the conscious choice to at least make my condescension explicit, because again, I've come to expect that kind of tone from her.  And in this case even my use of it had a point:  People who enjoy the mechanics of shooters can look down on RPGers just as easily as the reverse, which is basically the national past-time of this forum.

Edit: I don't generaly enjoy including such things in my posts, but at some point a poster's previous behavior precedes them, and I lose my usual even-keeled aloofness. So there you are.

Furthermore you haven't responded to my post in this thread in which I call you out for being completely contradictory and setting completely absurd standards for what is constructive that you then seem to immediately violate.  Why not start there before getting involved in this little sidechat I'm havin' with Sarah?

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:03 .

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...
Meh ok so my pistol does 1 more damage, or my only other choice of pistol fires slightly faster. Yay some choice. The weapon choices in ME2 are so arbitrary its not even worth discussing.

Spoken like someone who truly misses the point. 

Go play a level in Mass Effect 2 using the Mattock.  Play it again using the Revenant.  If you didn't change where you're aiming, how long you're holding down the trigger, how aggressively your Shepard moves, what range you're engaging the enemy at, and how often you're reloading/having to think about "ammo" management then you are - objectively - using the weapons incorrectly.

In a twitch-based game, those things matter.  Citing DPS as the only difference is basically like shouting "I don't get it!"

Arbitrary.  Please. 

Spoken like someone who doesn't get it either.

There is no info about the stats of weapons, armor, and other items, available in the game. At best some random number is given which is supposed to modify some secret stat. How are people supposed to find out which item is better? Sniff a gun? And some guns require some non-standard way of firing. Maybe that is fun, but chances are yuo'll never find out, because how to fire those is never explained in-game. Could be handy in advance, you know. In case you might run into an enemy.

What are people like Sarah are supposed to think about a crappy system like that? That it is the best thing since sliced bread? She could be right about the DPS. She has no way of knowing in-game, Yes there is a thread on the forums that is supposed to reveal this secret data, but there is no information whatsoever in-game. There's no paper manual either. Is this how we need to play games: Pause the game, open your browser, google up stuff, and continue?

Puhlease! (Doesn't that sound cool. I even managed to add an exclamation mark and added italics! I wanted to make you feel dumb, just like you did to Sarah. Did I succeed? All of course with an arbirary tongue in cheek).

This ^^   I don't need 50 different assault riffles to be happy, what I do need is physical on screen feedback of what makes one gun better than another, either in action of use, or via informational overlays. on exact weapon stats and why. Otherwise you're just guessing as the guns don't feel any different in use. And I'm sorry but a smaller ammo clip doesn't mean all that much when it comes to feeling "different"

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You can find cash (which makes no sense in the setting - it's not physical currency, so how does it get taken from a safe?) which I don't count as loot unless there's some limit to how much you can carry, and all those minerals (of which you can apparently carry an infinite amount).

Actually, I can think of plenty of reasons to invent something that works just like physical money in the setting. Given the sort of places you find cash -- often criminal enterprises -- money that doesn't move around in the data networks would be useful. And IIRC there isn't enough bandwidth through the mass relays to run an interstellar banking system in real time.

As for the debate, are you sure you and Sidney haven't been talking past each other? He keeps talking about inventory, you keep talking about loot. These are overlapping but not equivalent systems.

[Dave of Canada]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

Otherwise you're just guessing as the guns don't feel any different in use. And I'm sorry but a smaller ammo clip doesn't mean all that much when it comes to feeling "different"

What? Almost every gun in ME2 felt different except for a few odd cases and they were described in the information, ammo clips aside. Some shot faster, some were better at ripping apart shields, some had better zoom, ect.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:15 .

[upsettingshorts]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...
what I do need is physical on screen feedback of what makes one gun better than another, either in action of use, or via informational overlays. on exact weapon stats and why. Otherwise you're just guessing as the guns don't feel any different in use. And I'm sorry but a smaller ammo clip doesn't mean all that much when it comes to feeling "different"

Don't have a problem myself with wanting better player information.  None whatsoever.  I understand that initially selecting a weapon in ME2 involves a lot of guesswork before you've ever used them.

Even a shooter - basically a dirty word on these forums - like Battlefield Bad Company 2 has stats for damage, rate of fire, and accuracy that are immediately obvious before ever selecting a weapon.

But after having used a Mattock and a Revenant, their differences are obvious and go way beyond ammo clip and reserve.  That's what I was getting at with the whole "not getting it" thing, in fact.

Just like in Battlefield Bad Company 2, a weapon with a tremendous improvement in firing rate is often preferable to one with more DPS. 

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:17 .

[AngryFrozenWater]

Of course it is a GUI issue, Upsettingshorts. Somewhere in the game that data needs to be available. In DA:O that inventory is that GUI. It is even present in reduced form when you look at the PC or henchmen's stats. I think that is very convenient. About your post... Maybe I skipped it by accident (not sure). But the way you are asking me now does not exactly encourage me to respond.

[AlanC9]

The combat feedback thing isn't just ME2. DAO items were fairly well explained, but talents and spells were not. Laidlaw said they would be doing this better in DA2, though without specifics.

Upsettingshorts, I'm not sure everyone finds those item differences as obvious as we do.

Modifié par AlanC9, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:17 .

[upsettingshorts]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Of course it is a GUI issue, Upsettingshorts. Somewhere in the game that data needs to be available. In DA:O that inventory is that GUI. It is even present in reduced form when you look at the PC or henchmen's stats. I think that is very convenient. About your post... Maybe I skipped it by accident (not sure). But the way you are asking me now does not exactly encourage me to respond.

An inventory is just the list of what you're carrying with your party - not which of those items within it are better than others.  They could have had everything else be the same and not told you the stats of your weapons and armor in the GUI, and you'd have to watch the damage numbers after using them to determine which was better; then DA:O would have the same problem as ME2 but with an inventory.  It's a separate problem.  I think that's a logical distinction, don't you?

As far as whether or not you respond to my post, it's up to you of course.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:22 .

[upsettingshorts]

AlanC9 wrote...
Upsettingshorts, I'm not sure everyone finds those item differences as obvious as we do.

That's very likely.  I'd even go so far as to say that unless you're either used to or comfortable with shooter mechanics than they probably wouldn't be, which is why a GUI explaining them would be extremely welcome for those without that experience.

However, the Mass Effect series explicitly incorporates shooter mechanics.  If people don't like that, that's perfectly fine, but since it is a hybrid the effectiveness of the shooter elements is very important to gameplay.

For example I felt that while the Mass Effect 1 system had RPG-like inventory and item management, it failed badly as a shooter.  In fact, a shooter fan coming to that game would consider its shooter aspects as having been oversimplified.  No reloading?  All assault rifles fully auto?  Unlimited ammo?  All new weapons having the same performance characteristics as those they replace?  Someone coming from that camp would very likely call ME1's shooter features "dumbed down and streamlined for the RPG crowd."

Hybrids by their nature are going to do that to both sides of the genres they combine.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 05:29 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sidney wrote...

Right, BG2 and DAO offered "choices", assuming "I'll take it all" is a choice because with a hundred+  slots that is what you are doing.

100+ slots in BG?  There were 16 per character, so you'd clear 100 in you have all 6 party members, but nothing other than ammo stacked, so you routinely filled your inventory and couldn't take things with you.

Plus there were weight limits.  Swords and armour are heavy.  No one aside from high-strength fighters could carry extra sets of plate armour.

There's no tactical or strategic choice in traditional inventory systems. Tell me one time you made a tough "choice" about inventory in DAO.

I didn't.  DAO had a shared inventory that was always accessible to everyone, there were no weight limits, and everything stacked.  DAO failed utterly to provide the sort of inventory experience I would like.

I complained about it extensively prior to release (mostly about the UI - I hate list inventories - but also about it being shared and lacking weight limits)

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

But after having used a Mattock and a Revenant, their differences are obvious and go way beyond ammo clip and reserve.  That's what I was getting at with the whole "not getting it" thing, in fact.

I didn't find ME2's weapons' differences obvious at all.  As I've said, I used sniper rifles almost exclusively, and in the end I picked one with a clip of 13 shots over one with 9 shots because I had no information about how much damage they did.  They both routinely got one-shot kills from headshots - how was I supposed to know how much damage they did?  Or what their rate of fire was?  Should I have run controlled tests?

[Meltemph]

I thought the differences were very obvious...but I play a lot of shooters.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I didn't find ME2's weapons' differences obvious at all.  As I've said, I used sniper rifles almost exclusively, and in the end I picked one with a clip of 13 shots over one with 9 shots because I had no information about how much damage they did.  They both routinely got one-shot kills from headshots - how was I supposed to know how much damage they did?  Or what their rate of fire was?  Should I have run controlled tests?

As said, sniper rifles are the exception that proves the rule.  No, you shouldn't have had to run fire tests and yes there absolutely should have been something in the GUI that makes clear which weapons do what.   

But that's a GUI issue, not an inventory or weapon performance issue.  The data is there, it is just hidden from the player who is forced to - for lack of a better term - try them all out.  There's no good reason for hiding them, even shooters don't do that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

As said, sniper rifles are the exception that proves the rule.

This has nothing to do with your point, but "the exception that proves the rule" is perhaps the dumbest expression in the English language.

Exceptions don't prove rules.  Exceptions disprove rules.  That's how rules work.

You may now return to the topic.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 13 octobre 2010 - 06:06 .

[hangmans tree]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

This ^^   I don't need 50 different assault riffles to be happy, what I do need is physical on screen feedback of what makes one gun better than another, either in action of use, or via informational overlays. on exact weapon stats and why. Otherwise you're just guessing as the guns don't feel any different in use. And I'm sorry but a smaller ammo clip doesn't mean all that much when it comes to feeling "different"

Excuse me...but in ME2 in weapon descriptions you can find info on weapons features. Rate of fire, accuracy, is it best against shields, barriers or armour. Lack of numbers is the only thing thats missing...So I was always able to figure out which gun does best at what it  does  in certain circumstances.
Your stance implies you had no problem with DAOs talents, items and other descriptions while they were at least as vague as those from ME2. That is why people've been asking and clamoring about some combat log. Or better descriptions. Was it fixed in later DAO version?

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

As for the debate, are you sure you and Sidney haven't been talking past each other? He keeps talking about inventory, you keep talking about loot. These are overlapping but not equivalent systems.

I came in when people were talking about loot.

I'd much rather discuss inventory.  Inventory systems are important to me.

[Meltemph]

Ya, I could tell between the 2 multi shots snipers and the 2 single shots. On normal(Only tried normal once for about 10 min to see how easy it was) difficulty its hard to tell, cause the game is so damn easy and everything dies way to damn fast, but on the harder difficulties it is very apparent.



I mean, I didn't know initially before firing them, the differences, but that is with most shooters and I found that part fun.

[Sylvius the Mad]

hangmans tree wrote...

Your stance implies you had no problem with DAOs talents, items and other descriptions while they were at least as vague as those from ME2. That is why people've been asking and clamoring about some combat log. Or better descriptions. Was it fixed in later DAO version?

There was a mod that I think a lot of PC users employed.  "Detailed Tooltips" it was called.

It was terrific.  Without it the game would have been far less playable.  Because, frankly, differences aren't significant unless they're quantified.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Specifically with sniper rifles?
I didn't use the other weapons often enough to care.

Well, you say you basically chose between the two slow firing, heavy damage sniper rifles (which I assume doesn't include the Viper - so the original default sniper rifle vs. the Widow right?).  That means that you were choosing between two weapons that fit a specific playstyle based on the only information that was immediately apparent: Ammo.  Which is perfectly fine.

My point is that many other weapons in Mass Effect 2 lead to or are best suited for different playstyles.  The sniper rifles you chose are very specialized weapons in that they call for the shooter (eg, you) to be relatively stationary, engage the enemy at medium to long range, and be very careful and precise when aiming to achieve headshots.   Why?  Because the weapons have a low firing rate (misses are less forgiving than a fully automatic light machine gun), high precision (which also means less margin for error, unlike a shotgun blast), low clip capacity (again, don't want to miss), are best when zoomed (making close quarters combat near impossible to the point that you just ought to switch weapons), and do incredible damage per hit (justifying all the downsides of the weapon type).

Using such sniper rifles therefore dictates how you play.   There are equally significant differences between the assault rifles such as the Mattock (plays a lot like the Viper sniper rifle but without a scope, making it more useful in short to medium range situations but less useful in long range ones) and the Revenant (which combines the medium range killing power of other ARs when fired in bursts, and the short range devestation of the shotgun when used in full auto but is near useless at long range).

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
This has nothing to do with your point, but "the exception that proves the rule" is perhaps the dumbest expression in the English language.

Exceptions don't prove rules.  Exceptions disprove rules.  That's how rules work.

You may now return to the topic.

Well, you might be right about it being a useless expression most of the time but I was attempting to use it properly here.  Like I say above, your exclusive use of a specialized weapon dictated your playstyle, which I used to try to prove the rule.  Your choice not to explore the other options with any kind of consistency - as you say - doesn't mean that your playstyle wasn't effected by the features granted through Mass Effect 2's weapon variety.

Just to prove to myself I'm not crazy, I checked up on the expression in Wikipedia:

the presence of an exception establishes that a general rule exists

Seems coherent, and if it was good enough for Cicero it's definitely good enough for me.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 06:21 .

[hangmans tree]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
"the exception that proves the rule" is perhaps the dumbest expression in the English language.

Exceptions don't prove rules.  Exceptions disprove rules.  That's how rules work.

You may now return to the topic.

Not only english, this expression exist in my language too. I dont think its dumb, but maybe it does not exist in english? I dont know. In my language both meaning/sense and logic conclusion to this expression are not dumb.

[hangmans tree]

I advise ans ask all of you to return to inventory and loot regarding...well, DAO->DA2 transition. Otherwise the topic will be locked.



Could you? Thanks.

[upsettingshorts]

I'd be happy to, in which case most of the topics covered except this ME2 one seem on topic. The whole ME2 debate is important for twitch games, but since DA:2 isn't one it's basically off topic.

[tmp7704]

hangmans tree wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
"the exception that proves the rule" is perhaps the dumbest expression in the English language.

Exceptions don't prove rules.  Exceptions disprove rules.  That's how rules work.

You may now return to the topic.

Not only english, this expression exist in my language too. I dont think its dumb, but maybe it does not exist in english? I dont know. In my language both meaning/sense and logic conclusion to this expression are not dumb.

http://en.wikipedia....proves_the_rule

tl;dr: it does make sense when used as it was originally derived from latin. But it can be misused to nonsensical result. And if people aren't aware of the original meaning, they can conclude it's dumb.

[upsettingshorts]

Right, and I was using it to say that while ME2's weapon variety allows for and/or dictates certain tactics when choosing different ones, Sylvius specific choice between two sniper rifles - highly specialized weapons that call for a specific playstyle - proves that when there's a great difference between weapons, the difference between playstyles is equally great.

Granted, both the tangent and the expression I used in it are off topic.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 13 octobre 2010 - 06:27 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

The sniper rifles you chose are very specialized weapons in that they call for the shooter (eg, you) to be relatively stationary, engage the enemy at medium to long range, and be very careful and precise when aiming to achieve headshots.

That's true.  That's how I wanted to play, so those were the weapons I used.

I don't like shooters - I find the frantic action really stressful - and the last shooter I enjoyed playing was Delta Force (released 1998) which allowed me to snipe from extreme range, so when the ME sniper rifle did the same the choice was obvious.

ME2's level design was less conducive to that approach (you almost never got to see your opponents at extreme range, and ME2's rifles had a much shorter maximum effective range than ME's rifles did.  But anything that turns shooter gameplay into something like a pausable tactical gameplay makes the game better for me.

the presence of an exception establishes that a general rule exists

I don't think rules accommodate exceptions.  If anything, the presence of an exception demonstrates that the rule never existed.

But I'm picky about these things.