93 réponses à ce sujet

[AkiKishi]

Jabarai wrote...

Difficulty level greatly influences the level of fear and panic in a combat, which directly influences how believable and threatening Harby sounds like. If you die a lot, despite your best efforts, it does teach you a point about how hopeless the situation is and, ultimately, makes Harby's threats seem well-founded. That's what I felt, at least.

But then again, when I picked up ME2, I'd only played ME once months ago and my shooting skills were mediocre at best. In the end, that is why Harby felt like a real threat throughout the whole game experience.

On insanity NGP (with everything level 30) he's a pain in the butt on Horizon because you have few upgrades. By the time you see him next he's just sort of bothersome. I actually found it easier to kill him off and let him jump 3 or 4 times than take risks killing the drones.

Normal he's not even worth changing tactics for.

Either way he still sounds like he's trying too hard with his taunts.

[Forsythia]

I don't mind the Collector's that much, it was actually Harbinger that ruined them. Everytime the Collector's appeared, all I could think of was how quickly I wanted to end that part because of Harbinger's talking. It didn't make me feel threatened or something, just annoyed.

[wulf3n]

They were too plain for me. I couldn't tell any of the troop types apart until they actually started shooting, not to mention defeating them worked exactly the same for each troop type, and why brown? why does practically everything in games these days have to be earth tones?

Modifié par wulf3n, 05 février 2011 - 09:36 .

[pohaturon]

just cause the collectors kinda look like other aliens does not make them boring (true, i dont get how you make something that looks like a prothean to look like that) they are a mostly original idea

and I bet they are more interesting than you...and probably have better grammar......

[ZLurps]

Collectors visual presentation is IMO fine, they are alien and interesting looking and I don't see the problem there.

However, like many others has said it in this topic, I felt that they don't live up to the expectations.

I think build up was fine but later in game, besides Prothean -> Collector plot wist they do not player doesn't really learn much anything else about them and doesn't bond with them.
Combat against Collectors is IMO also factors that adds to the problem, it's very repetitive.
I think Harbinger "direct control" was supposed to bring variety to combat experience but instead it turned Collectors to some sort of parody characters. And Harbinger... the world least successful bully? I almost feel sympathy for this weak and feeble idiot.
Harbinger: "This will hurt you"
Player: "Sigh... (for nth. time) here is Widow, now gtfo" BLAM!
Player; "Hmm... (thinks about shopping list) Oh, combat... Next!"
Harbinger: "You are vermin"
Player: "Oh good God! No, not this **** again..." (rises from cover exposing him/herself to the fire, flips the bird to the Harbinger and shouts back mimicing Harbingers voice) "You are popamole..."
/ notices that squad mates has killed Harbinger already.
Rinse and repeat.

Seriously though, it's just my personal habit to use one difficulty setting during play trough. I could just set it to hard core to see if that makes any difference, but habits die hard. Anyway personal preferences like that are not on BioWare's responsibility to fix but mine.

However I think Harbinger was overused and underwhelming and there are more problems than just combat difficulty.
I think Collectors weren't very versatile enemy in general. They do not use their ability to fly to get behind player and for example there isn't any sort of Geth hopper kind of enemy introduced later in game.
Player already experiences Husks, Psions and Praetorians in first major Collector battle on Horizon. Then combat against Collectors later in game feels repetitive because when s/he has fought one Collector battle, s/he has fought them all.


To add something positive, build up for Collectors was IMO fine.
During introduction they destroy Normandy and kill you. Top of the line Alliance stealth technology is not a match for their technology, Normandy can't evade their fire by evasive maneuvers of military class frigate with most likely the best pilot in helm. Also shields can't protect Normandy from Collector cruiser beam weapon. So Collectors technology is clearly superior in comparison to what Alliance has.
Later we see more collectors in cutscenes which are IMO great and also the last battle sequences on Horizon are great. It's a pity that Collectors as characters and enemy combatants just didn't develop much further than that during the rest of the game.

Modifié par ZLurps, 05 février 2011 - 01:31 .

[AkiKishi]

The only time I had realy problems with him is on platfrom number 1 and that's more because the battlefield is designed to be stacked against you. On insane you are in a withering crossfire and then Harbinger walks up and hits you with his singularity. Outside of that encouter it's like you read my mind

[ZLurps]

I see. Thanks for the info, I was wondering how players experience the Collectors on harder difficulty settings. I mean I play on normal because I don't play much shooters, or actually much games at all anymore and so I think I fit in to "Sunday gamer" type.

I was curious how players that has more experience feel about fighting the Collectors if even I feel it's... not that impressive.
So... In addition to other things, it looks like there might be balancing problem regarding Collector combat abilities.

Modifié par ZLurps, 05 février 2011 - 01:43 .

[Iwillbeback]

I would like to make a complaint.

The Op has made a joke of his writing ability and then complains about someone misspelling "yours".

If that's not the definition of irony then the reapers have already won.

[marshalleck]

The problem with the Collectors, and much of ME2, is that the writers apparently forgot one of the most elementary writing guidelines: don't just tell your audience, show them. Instead of wandering through the ship and having EDI hold our hand through the entire process of revelation by telling us each piece of information verbally, it should have been more dramatic. I get that Collectors are culturally dead, having no art or whatever. But why would you expect art and decoration on a militarized scientific research vessel? And would Shepard or Mordin even be able to interpret Collector aesthetic sensibility, having almost no knowledge of the species whatsoever? The Collector ship could, for all they know, be the pinnacle of Collector ship design qualities. 

I think it would have been more interesting to visit an actual Collector world, not just the ship and the base. Allow the player to piece the information together themselves, without EDI explaining every step in a deadpan voice using small words as though Shepard has the intellect of a child. Show me a world of Prothean ruins, with strange outcroppings of hive-like structures 'growing' out of them. Show me a total lack of any sort of recreational or casual facilities. Show me a world barren of any sign of cultural development, a world wracked by industrialization with no regard to environmental degradation or healthy biodiversity. A world comprised of nothing but biolabs with corpses of vivisected and augmented species, including Collectors. Show me the bitter tragedy of this once noble and accomplished species, who following their hopes and dreams reached out to the stars only to find that they were alone in the galaxy. Show me how they had been broken by the Reapers. Show me the indignity of repurposing an entire civilization to carrying out horrific genetic experimentation. 

There was potential here for truly shocking, heart-breaking, and terrifying revelations about what Reapers do to the civilizations they exterminate, but it was all unrealized. I should have been emotionally crushed by the revelation of the Collectors' origins, but instead I was callously indifferent. They meant nothing to me.

Modifié par marshalleck, 05 février 2011 - 02:31 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Iwillbeback wrote...

I would like to make a complaint.
The Op has made a joke of his writing ability and then complains about someone misspelling "yours".
If that's not the definition of irony then the reapers have already won.

The Reapers have already won, then.

[AkiKishi]

marshalleck wrote...

There was potential here for truly shocking and terrifying revelations about what Reapers do to entire civilizations, but it was all unrealized.

There was a big pile of corpses and there was that whole turning to goo business. I guess If I'd have missed and Kelly etc. had gotten gooed I would have felt something. But I made it in time.

It's so far fetched and impersonal that it just does not work on me.

[Slayer299]

Jabarai wrote...
It wasn't a euphemism of any sort, don't worry. What I meant was that if one gets caught up by the sort of action packed, hurried, superficial and looks-centered TV or film production that is the norm today, one gets 'dulled'. Now we're at a point where series like Rubycon get cancelled due to their continuing storyline and lack of pace.

Ahhhhhh! Thank you for explaining that

[Sajuro]

To all of the people who are complaining that Harbinger isn't as eloquent as Sovereign, the only time you heard from Harb was when you were escaping the collector base or in battle. Since Shepard couldn't give some kind of response, Harbinger couldn't go on to give a big speech like Sovereign did.

The one time you did hear Sovereign in a setting more chaotic than a tea party, his line was "I am sovereign, and this station is mine!" while Harbinger informed you as the collector base was blowing up "You have changed nothing!" and various exposition.

In closing I say: Bravo Harbinger for not needing to sit Shepard down on some backwater planet to get your point across.

[AkiKishi]

Sajuro wrote...

To all of the people who are complaining that Harbinger isn't as eloquent as Sovereign, the only time you heard from Harb was when you were escaping the collector base or in battle. Since Shepard couldn't give some kind of response, Harbinger couldn't go on to give a big speech like Sovereign did.
The one time you did hear Sovereign in a setting more chaotic than a tea party, his line was "I am sovereign, and this station is mine!" while Harbinger informed you as the collector base was blowing up "You have changed nothing!" and various exposition.
In closing I say: Bravo Harbinger for not needing to sit Shepard down on some backwater planet to get your point across.

I think part of the problem is he goes on as long as the fight lasts. Which can get really annoying if he's hidden or your on a higher difficulty. On easier difficulties he barely gets a word out before you can head shoot him.

[Sajuro]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

To all of the people who are complaining that Harbinger isn't as eloquent as Sovereign, the only time you heard from Harb was when you were escaping the collector base or in battle. Since Shepard couldn't give some kind of response, Harbinger couldn't go on to give a big speech like Sovereign did.
The one time you did hear Sovereign in a setting more chaotic than a tea party, his line was "I am sovereign, and this station is mine!" while Harbinger informed you as the collector base was blowing up "You have changed nothing!" and various exposition.
In closing I say: Bravo Harbinger for not needing to sit Shepard down on some backwater planet to get your point across.

I think part of the problem is he goes on as long as the fight lasts. Which can get really annoying if he's hidden or your on a higher difficulty. On easier difficulties he barely gets a word out before you can head shoot him.

Yeah, I play on normal all of the time.

[Pro_Consul]

ZLurps wrote...

To add something positive, build up for Collectors was IMO fine.

Not sure I can agree with this one bit here. I thought the build for the Collectors should have dropped a hint or two that something vaguely "Prothean" was going on. After all, Shep is supposed to have the collected racial memories of the entire Prothean race buried in his subconscious, and could have readily recognized a bit here and there and remarked about how each seemed to remind him of something from a Prothean ruin or whatever. If the first of these had begun before the initial Collector intro by Veetor, that would have been quite effective in setting up a real head thumper during the reveal of Collector origins much later. There are also other small things that could have been dropped in, both pre-intro and pre-reveal, to give the Collectors just teensy bit of depth and make them seem like the tragic figures they truly are. But I won't go into those unless asked, since they are halfway tangential to the OP's question.

Modifié par Pro_Consul, 05 février 2011 - 06:17 .

[HdS84]

I think Bioware just changed the plot in mid-development. The whole think starts out great and then it's going...ugly.
Thinks like Harbinger are barely explained in-game - after my first playthrough i didn't knew the name!
A plot like "the collectors have lost their comlink with harbi because citadel was corrupted and know are trying to build a mass relay to get them into the galaxy" would have been much better.
Maybe they're hunting Mass-relay components, eezo and other stuff and you are trying to deny them this.
This would have avoided the "just drones" part and maybe there could have been something like small remnants of prothean knowledge inside the collectors. This could be revelead in a much more active manner.
The end part would've been much the same, but you would have FAILED: The mass effect relay would have been smashed, but a "hey trouble!" signal would have been send to the armada.
I suspect such a end game was planned, the whole harbinger plot seems just to artifical to me. Maybe Boware doenst want a "negative" ending, it's quite uncommen for games.

Modifié par HdS84, 05 février 2011 - 07:23 .

[AkiKishi]

Shame, negative endings work rather well as middle episodes.

[James2912]

It would have been epic if you failed to start the Collectors from opening a relay, and then the reapers come riding in at the end of the game. In ME3 Shepard would blame himself and seek redemption by fixing his "failure" to stop the Reapers from entering the Galaxy.

[Lee337]

HdS84 wrote...

I think Bioware just changed the plot in mid-development. The whole think stzarts out great and then it's goind...ugly.
Thinks like Harbinger are barely explained in-game - after my first playthrough i didn't knew the name!
A plot like "the collectors have lost their comlink with harbi because citadel was corrupted and know are trying to build a mass relay to get them into the galaxy" would have been much better.
Maybe they're hunting Mass-relay components, eezo and other stuff and you are trying to deny them this stuff.
This would have avoided the "just drones" part and maybe there could have been something like small remnants of prothean knowledge inside the collectory. This could be revelead in a much more active manner.
The end part would've been much the same, but you would have FAILED: The mass effect relay would have been smashed, but a "hey trouble!" signal would have been send to the armada.
I suspect such a end game was planned, the whole harbinger plot seems just to artifical to me. Maybe Boware doenst want a "negative" ending, it's quite uncommen for games.

I agree that makes sense, building a mass relay to link them to would have served them better than a big human reaper. I like ME2 but I'm holding judgement on its relevance until we see where ME3 takes us.

[didymos1120]

marshalleck wrote...

The problem with the Collectors, and much of ME2, is that the writers apparently forgot one of the most elementary writing guidelines: don't just tell your audience, show them.

Guess they forgot during ME1 too:  Sovereign on Virmire, Saren on Virmire, Vigil (oh so much Vigil), Benezia, Anderson talking about Saren's history, Tali the Ambulatory (or rather, Stationary) Quarian Codex Entry, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Modifié par didymos1120, 05 février 2011 - 09:21 .

[marshalleck]

didymos1120 wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

The problem with the Collectors, and much of ME2, is that the writers apparently forgot one of the most elementary writing guidelines: don't just tell your audience, show them.

Guess they forgot during ME1 too:  Sovereign on Virmire, Vigil (oh so much Vigil), Benezia, Anderson talking about Saren's history, Tali the Ambulatory (or rather, Stationary) Quarian Codex Entry, etc., etc., etc., etc.

All of which I am pretty sure I've called out as being weak points at some point over the years I've posted to the bioware mass effect forums. Is that all? Did you mistake my post for a ME1 vs ME2 argument? I've never ever once made a secret of the fact that I hate, HATE heavy-handed exposition being done through awkward dialogue moments. 

Oh wait, I think I see. You keyed in on my use of "ME2" in the post. Well, since this is the ME2 spoiler forum, and a thread specifically about the Collectors, it really wouldn't be suitable to start rambling about ME1 would it. 

Modifié par marshalleck, 05 février 2011 - 09:30 .

[Iakus]

marshalleck wrote...

The problem with the Collectors, and much of ME2, is that the writers apparently forgot one of the most elementary writing guidelines: don't just tell your audience, show them. Instead of wandering through the ship and having EDI hold our hand through the entire process of revelation by telling us each piece of information verbally, it should have been more dramatic. I get that Collectors are culturally dead, having no art or whatever. But why would you expect art and decoration on a militarized scientific research vessel? And would Shepard or Mordin even be able to interpret Collector aesthetic sensibility, having almost no knowledge of the species whatsoever? The Collector ship could, for all they know, be the pinnacle of Collector ship design qualities. 

Actually Shepard, with the Cipher, may have the ability to interpret Prothean aesthetics, if not Collector.

Imagine, moving through the Collector Ship, or the Collector Base, Shepard gets a nagging sense of familiarity that he can't quite place.  Until it hits him that this stuff is all Prothean!  the ship is a heavily modified Prothean Cruiser!  The base of a heavily a repurposed Prothean design!  He tells EDI and Mordin to run some scans, and presto!  Prothean-Collector connection!

I think it would have been more interesting to visit an actual Collector world, not just the ship and the base. Allow the player to piece the information together themselves, without EDI explaining every step in a deadpan voice using small words as though Shepard has the intellect of a child. Show me a world of Prothean ruins, with strange outcroppings of hive-like structures 'growing' out of them. Show me a total lack of any sort of recreational or casual facilities. Show me a world barren of any sign of cultural development, a world wracked by industrialization with no regard to environmental degradation or healthy biodiversity. A world comprised of nothing but biolabs with corpses of vivisected and augmented species, including Collectors. Show me the bitter tragedy of this once noble and accomplished species, who following their hopes and dreams reached out to the stars only to find that they were alone in the galaxy. Show me how they had been broken by the Reapers. Show me the indignity of repurposing an entire civilization to carrying out horrific genetic experimentation. 

Indeed, the Cipher (see above) could have been put to even better use there.  Where perhaps Shepard could stumble across the debris of a pre-Collector civilization admidst the wreckage of this souless hive.

Modifié par iakus, 06 février 2011 - 01:08 .

[Iakus]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Shame, negative endings work rather well as middle episodes.

Yep.  Especially "dark second acts"

[Jzadek72]

mangeo wrote...

Mesina2 wrote...

You fail at grammar.


Also did I hurt your feelings so you blocked me?

I blocked you because of the ignorant conversation killing behavior you have presented on my forums.

• What Mesina said is true.
• YOUR forums? Ever heard the term "Delusions of grandeur?"