RiouHotaru wrote...
I've done this so many times with so many people. To say the skills "have no reall effect on anything, at least nothing that changes how you play the game" is a lie, straight up. I'm sorry, the only time a skill in ME1 showed any significant difference in use, was between level 1 and level 12 (skill levels that is) The difference between skill level 1 and skill level 2 was basically invisible unless you knew the math being used. And even if you knew that mathmatically you were doing more damage/hitting more often/etc, it wasn't an effect you noticed in-game.
That's why people are whining that they need to put skill points in order to actually land a bullet where they are aiming, because putting skill points does nothing. Seriously, you're saying putting points in decryption, hacking does nothing? Every skill affects your player's abilities. It IS noticeable, unless you play at casual. And even if you'd only sense the progression because of the mathematics, well the mathematics alone proves the player is progressing, no matter if it's noticeable or not. Thing is, ME2's skill have nothing to do with abilities. Having different weapon types have nothing to do with abilities.
Charm/Intimidate was a useless skill IMO, because the game gave you 3 free points of each on every playthrough. Plus having a skill to determine your conversational success as oppossed to actual roleplaying and personality felt cheap. It's also been mentioned earlier that many of the skills were redundant or useless because of the new combat system.
Except you don't base the usefulness of a skill based on how many free points you can get per playthrough, but how well it can help you
within a single playthrough. You can't say charm and intimidate is useless. And the new morality system discourages roleplaying, since there's not even any drawback in choosing a charm skill over a much needed weapon skill, there's no point in not choosing the option that will end up in the end of the road. All you need to do, is either always choose the top or bottom options, always. How does this have anything to do with role-playing at all? What you got, is 3 already perfectly determined Shepard characters, and all you get to choose is which you want. Stray off that road that gives you instant sucess in every left -option, and your character will probably contradict himself more than one time, not counting the times when he'll sound he's changing personalities. Trying to roleplay for real, and you get the same consequences. Basically, ME2's brand of roleplaying is decided between being the good and the bad guy, period. How is that simply streamlining? At least in ME1 I could make a decent grey-type character, now it's impossible in ME2 without contradicting what you said the moment before or changing personalities. Sure, there was a bit of moral bias in ME1, but it wasn't nearly as oppressing and restrictive.
As for the combat system and redundant skills, there's a difference between cutting out some skills and taking off the whole system to replace it with a non-equivalent which is much more basic. Instead of streamlining something into something simpler, they overly simplify things and defeat the original purpose of the whole system - at least in totallity for soldiers. The original stat-tree was mean as a character progression system, one where you try to choose how you want to play your character. Now beyond your class (which you could choose in ME1), putting skills in the new skill tree only affects combat, in relation to your class solely. An adept shoots as well as a soldier, when the soldier is obviously the better at that, the only advantage he has is bullet types, which there are no reasons why an adept couldn't use any. Anyone can hack or decrypt as good as anyone, basically also defeating the purpose of those mechanics. Why keep hacking or decrypting if you can't fail? Why bother loosing your time in those minigames if you can do this from the get go without spending points anywhere. THAT is dumbing down. It's overly simplifying things, streamlining is making things simpler without loosing complexity, or at least making overly complex things simpler. I think we can all agree ME1's skill-tree wasn't particularly complex.
It's like with the exclusion of mods, they again defeated the purpose of modifying weapons. Why bother make a research system if you can scan the **** out of every planet and get every upgrade available? And why still bother make it if every research does nothing but improve, the whole point of the mods weren't to simply improve, yes improve, but customize your weapons for your needs. An auto-"get my weapon better" button does nothing. It's a time sink, it's as useless as hacking and decrypting without skills to actually make it possible. I'm not saying it was perfect in ME1, but at least it worked, at least it served a purpose, now it serves nothing. That is dumbing down.
And really, I'm glad for the lack of inventory. Not having my cluttered and useless inventory screens stuffed to the brim with usless and difficult, if not impossible to organize weapons/armor/mods was a welcome relief. The mods came in the form of your armor pieces adding bonuses to stats, and in ammo powers, replacing the need for biotic amps and weapon mods. And weapon mods themselves were useless since invisible dice-rolls were eliminated.
Well, even if you're glad it's gone, it's gone, that's still dumbing down and not simple streamlining. I don't know anyone (including myself) who thought the ME1 inventory wasn't overly clunky and terrible overall. I didn't mind it too much, but it definitely could get made over again, streamline things a bit probably, but getting rid of the whole thing isn't streamlining.
If you think mods would be useless now, you didn't get how they worked. Basically, the soldier class abilities were mod-like effects of ME1: you're saying yourself that these skills are useless - I think they are, as skills, as mods were never essential, just very useful, skills needs to be essential to be useful. Mods gave effects to your weapon that affected enemies differently depending on which enemy they were used, that has absolutely nothing to do with invisible dice-rolls. In fact, there were no dice-rolls in ME1. Accuracy isn't something dictated by dice-rolls. Their effects may seem so, but not the mechanic in itself. Having a better skill in weapons just makes your spread smaller, where the bullet lands is always random no matter the skill, same thing for ME2, the bullets land randomly within the reticle, skills just make the spread different than the reticle.
Also, how are the new skills "nothing to do with RPGS"? Because it's not a huge, excruiatingly painful math equation? That's not what an RPG is. An RPG is not about math and stats. That's mechanical, that's gameplay. Any number of other games have these and aren't RPGs. Why the heck should ME need them to be classified as an RPG? And the combat system? Sure it's Gears of War 2, but man if that isn't a strict upgrade from the broken combat mechanics of ME1 where you used Double Frictionless Materials X on a Spectre X Assault Rifle, or spammed your entire skillpool, took cover, waited for each skill to cooldown and then rinse and repeat.
We musn't be playing the same game, I never had to do any excruciatingly painful math equation while playing my RPGs, it's the game itself that does it behind screen. I may have overreacted over the "nothing to do with RPGs", but that's because I solely played as a soldier in my couple of playthroughs and the skills indeed had nothing to do with RPGs, as they had nothing to do with character abilities, but things anybody could get if they had the money. Other classes actually have real abilities, but only combat-based, which again isn't simple streamlining. If ME1 only had combat related abilities then yes, it would simply be streamlining, but then Bioware simplified beyond combat and scrapped every skill unrelated to that aspect.
I never said ME should be classified as an RPG. Well, playing ME2, I expected - and rightly so - an experience comparable to the one of ME1's, after all it is a sequel, not a reboot or unrelated game. They can modify their formula all they want, but any good sequel at least caters to the fans of the original, it should have the same spirit and everything. Not only ME2 has a totally different feel and aesthetics, but the gameplay itself feels like the game is a semi-reboot rather than a true sequel. Some of the mechanics are totally unrecognizable, dumbed down, or simply unrecognizable. ME1 happens to be an RPG of some degree, it's just a way to sucessfully compare both games. ME1 didn't need to be an RPG, but it's not something you should change halfway, no? Would you expect any Elder Scroll game to not be an RPG?
Speaking of Bethesda, they've been streamlining their games ever since Daggerfall, yet all of them are totally recognizable as Elder Scrolls games, and only barely actually dumbed down. They cut off skills, but only redundant ones and didn't scrap the whole system completely and left it unrecognizable. Well, Skyrim has no classes anymore, but that actually won't really change anything, at least they made sure - via a clever levelling system - that it will be basically as if you choose a class you yourself created (as it is possible in earlier games), but just more adaptive. They may have dumbed down with fast travel though, as rather than making Morrowind's travel system simpler, or just using the Daggerfall travel system where you had to prepare your travel even if you teleported (and you could get attacke on road), Oblivion just scrapped everything and used quasi-immediate transportation - which tere are no difference technically.
ME2 is, (in my opnion), a strict upgrade from ME1, both in story and mechanics. I'm worried about the whole "Bringing back more RPG-elements" for ME3 because I do NOT want a rehash of ME1 as the finale.
I think you fail to understand why some people were irked by ME2's change, and what people want from ME3. We DO NOT want ME1 part 3. We ALL made it clear what were ME1's problems, we ALL acknowledged them. But instead of actually fixing the problems and building UPON the first outing, keeping every mechanic that were introduced in that game and known to represent the game, Bioware decided to cut half of it, dumbing down the rest. YES the RPG elements weren't particularly well implemented, I never said they were perfect, I just defended the case that Bioware did dumb them down, instead of refining them. I'm not asking to get back ME1's skill system, all I'm asking is for a decent one, a decent inventory, decent weapon customization, decent planet exploration, etc. And problem is, Bioware missed to oportunity to refine everything - as there were quite flawed - and refine them even more for the grand finale. Instead, everything they bring back is bound to be less good than if they never cut them or dumbed them down initially.
That's the problem, everyone seem to ignore we don't want ME1 back, but were disappointed ME2 didn't feel like a real Mass Effect sequel.
And don't let me get started on the writing, as seen from the different approach to the game, music, cinematics and feel, Bioware obviously catered to the Hollywood demographic with immature jokes that aren't even funny, bad stereotypes (at least they could've chosen interesting stereotypes), generic story and overall bad writing. Basically the polar opposite of ME1, or almost.
Retour en haut
). If DA II has similar gameplay, then yep, I can guarantee that will be confused by it.
