333 réponses à ce sujet

[FlyingWalrus]

Also, can I point out the logical fallacy of quoting one line out of an opinion article from a guy on the Internet as a factual exhibit for your talking point? Yes. Let's try to be more intellectually forthcoming than that.

Bettering the melee system was the first of many steps Bioware needed to take to introduce some variety into ME's combat from 2 going forward.

[GuardianAngel470]

Guldhun2 wrote...

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Guldhun2 wrote...

http://www.escapistm...-of-Mass-Effect

By the way I just read that article and find it amusing that you cited it. It pretty much undermines your point completely. In it the author describes one of the key points I brought up (player influenced conversations/storytelling) and heavily emphasized how ME2 takes the basic formula of action games in general, not just GoW, and elevates it into something much more.

He basically describes why what Bioware did in ME2 is a good thing.

Last paragraph.
.....Mass Effect 2 is clearly courting the Gears of War / Halo crowd, and I'll be very interested to see how it's received by those gamers......





Thank you.

And the very next sentence: "It's my hope (and I know just how naive I'm being here) that this dynamic storytelling breaks free of its RPG roots and escapes into other genres."

By the way, there is a very big difference between courting a crowd and copying a brand. For the reasons I outlined you can't really compare ME2 and Gears of War but the developers have clearly stated that their entire purpose behind the ME franchise was to attract a wider audience. It's the reason they went with a shooter when they had no prior experience.

It is obvious that ME2 is more action oriented vs ME1. I don't mind that; as you know now I like my shooters. However it plays, throughout its 40+ hour length, completely differently than Gears of War. The clearest comparison point is combat and though I've already pointed out why they can't be compared, it is important to remember just how much of ME2 is spend talking to squadmates, quest givers, and random people. It's also very important to remember how much of the game is spent jogging around hub worlds and NOT fighting.

Combat only makes up one portion of the entire ME experience, but in my opinion it is a good thing that it is now significantly less clunky.

[Guldhun2]

The omniblade™ is there to court to the Gears of War and Halo crowd. In an attempt to woo them.

Modifié par Guldhun2, 03 septembre 2011 - 11:07 .

[Cuthlan]

Guldhun2 wrote...

At what point while playing ME1 and ME2 did you think "gee, a hologram blade would be nice to have"? Even though you could already melee.

I'll answer that for you. Never.

When my Vanguard Charged and hit with his elbow. Again. And again.

[GuardianAngel470]

sympathy4saren2 wrote...

All of those things are there, yes. But at what level? Story-wise its excellent. But what am I doing 90% of the time? I'm in a corridor, shooting. It's boring. My best moments of the game are spent behind cutscenes and the 'corridors' of the Citadel and Omega just checking stuff out before buying all three of the merchandise selections offered at a local vendor.

The galaxy is predictable. Go here...cutscene....shoot. Go here...same thing. Side-missions....save a few....same thing. It's become a never ending shoot in narrow hallways, and what there was there to customize wasn't there very strongly. Hopefully that will change as it looks like it will.

Like I've argued previously...the perception, whether it be legitimate or unfair, lies in the meat and potatoes of the basic, fundamental and traditional rpg gameplay mechanics and the ability to have control over as many details as possible. And to have those systems as deep as possible. Having multiple methods of completing a mission...in different gameplay styles.

First of all, that statistic is false. I don't even need to time it and calculate it, I've played the game enough times to just know that it was not 90% combat. At most 80% if you only count missions and talk to your crew only to receive missions. If you do count the time spent talking to the crew and other people it gets much lower.

Second, there were more combat-less sidequests and even main quests in ME2 than there were in ME1. Both thane and samara's loyalty missions required absolutely zero combat. I can think of several side missions in ME2 that also bucked this supposed trend.

Third, if you look at the types of things you could put skill points into vs the types of upgrades you can purchase in ME2 they pretty much level out. Thinking back, it seems to me like weapon proficiency skills, power skill levels, and defense skills all have counterparts in ME2, they just aren't based on XP but instead minerals.

But that's a topic for a different thread.

[Il Divo]

Hmm, that is an interesting question that I never really considered: what percent of Bioware games are typically spent in combat?

[DeathDragon185]

sympathy4saren2 wrote...

All of those things are there, yes. But at what level? Story-wise its excellent. But what am I doing 90% of the time? I'm in a corridor, shooting. It's boring. My best moments of the game are spent behind cutscenes and the 'corridors' of the Citadel and Omega just checking stuff out before buying all three of the merchandise selections offered at a local vendor.

The galaxy is predictable. Go here...cutscene....shoot. Go here...same thing. Side-missions....save a few....same thing. It's become a never ending shoot in narrow hallways, and what there was there to customize wasn't there very strongly. Hopefully that will change as it looks like it will.

Like I've argued previously...the perception, whether it be legitimate or unfair, lies in the meat and potatoes of the basic, fundamental and traditional rpg gameplay mechanics and the ability to have control over as many details as possible. And to have those systems as deep as possible. Having multiple methods of completing a mission...in different gameplay styles.

which is why the omniblade is here to make combat abit cooler. and for the multiple ways to complete a mission will only make those people who compare ME to CoW angryer

[GuardianAngel470]

Il Divo wrote...

Hmm, that is an interesting question that I never really considered: what percent of Bioware games are typically spent in combat?

It is an interesting question and probably is highly dependent on how thorough you are and how much you enjoy talking to all the characters. 

It's also probably one of those questions we'll likely never know the answer to.

[Il Divo]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

Hmm, that is an interesting question that I never really considered: what percent of Bioware games are typically spent in combat?

It is an interesting question and probably is highly dependent on how thorough you are and how much you enjoy talking to all the characters. 

It's also probably one of those questions we'll likely never know the answer to.

True. In my case, I can go quite a bit simply talking to characters. I'm the type of player who, no matter how many times I've completed the game, has no problem speaking with every npc. Still, the "joy" of the Bioware experience is that typically I'm not thinking about how much time I spend talking to fake characters in an imaginary world, which it makes it even harder to answer that question.

Modifié par Il Divo, 03 septembre 2011 - 11:45 .

[legion999]

Guldhun2 wrote...

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Guldhun2 wrote...

Omniblade.

Really? Scripted takedowns make ME2 like Gears of War? That's your best argument?

Okay. Deus Ex: Human Revolution has scripted takedowns, third person views, cover, and guns. Is it like Gears of War? Must a game use the A button to activate cover in order to be like Gears of War?

Do all shooters with regenerative health play like Halo 2, the game that largely popularized it? What about pressing X to reload and interact with the environment? Does that make all games that use that button configuration play like Halo?

How bout the two weapon limit, again popularized by Halo: CE. Do all games with that classify as Halo ripoffs? That would mean, based on those three classifications I provided, that the entire recent Call of Duty franchise is really just one big Halo ripoff. Both games have guns and first person perspective so that's five total similarities.

Yes it's all a Halo ripoff. And i'm serious. That's the great decline in gaming today.

<facepalm>

[TuringPoint]

Guldhun2 wrote...

It's the future? What good would a chai omniblade do apart from "OMG IT R COOOOOL"? You have a gun, several even and you have biotics that work the star wars's force. When do you ever need a omnichainblade?

Why would you ever need... biotics?  Except then you would just have guns, going from your list.

What other games lack biotics or force powers or tech powers?  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Way to use your imagination, though, in comparing Mass Effect to unrelated franchises.  I'm serious.  Well, in that I'm making fun of you.

With regards to "courting" the Action Gaming crowd, it seems to me that would only be a bad thing if you also took away plot and everything else that makes Bioware's games interesting.   Which they don't seem to be doing.

Modifié par Alocormin, 03 septembre 2011 - 11:47 .

[Whereto]

Just a question, whats wrong with scripted take downs? I prefer to have like 10 different take downs rather than the same 3 punches and a guy falling a slightly different way due to rag doll effects

[Someone With Mass]

Guldhun2 wrote...

At what point while playing ME1 and ME2 did you think "gee, a hologram blade would be nice to have"? Even though you could already melee.

I'll answer that for you. Never.

No, I thought: "Gee, it sure would be good if I had a melee attack that didn't blow ass."

I got my wish granted.

[DeathDragon185]

Someone With Mass wrote...

Guldhun2 wrote...

At what point while playing ME1 and ME2 did you think "gee, a hologram blade would be nice to have"? Even though you could already melee.

I'll answer that for you. Never.

No, I thought: "Gee, it sure would be good if I had a melee attack that didn't blow ass."

I got my wish granted.

 lol. People seem to get angry at the most smallest things. Well I guess we can enjoy laughing at these Idiots:devil:.

[ODST 3]

OP asks us to stop then promptly compares the two.

[marshalleck]

Guldhun2 wrote...

At what point while playing ME1 and ME2 did you think "gee, a hologram blade would be nice to have"? Even though you could already melee.

I'll answer that for you. Never.

Actually, I remember long before ME2 came out, people were asking for some sort of melee energy weapon. Some people even suggested lightsabers. 

[Inutaisho7996]

Someone With Mass wrote...

Guldhun2 wrote...

At what point while playing ME1 and ME2 did you think "gee, a hologram blade would be nice to have"? Even though you could already melee.

I'll answer that for you. Never.

No, I thought: "Gee, it sure would be good if I had a melee attack that didn't blow ass."

I got my wish granted.

I too was often forced into melee range by enemies I didn't see flanking me after I moved forward, Vangard charges,  husks, ect., and I was very glad to hear that 3 will have an effective melee attack.

Modifié par Inutaisho7996, 04 septembre 2011 - 02:39 .

[Gatt9]

FlyingWalrus wrote...

> OP speaks sense
> OP will be ignored

That is how things work on the Bioware Sociopathy Network.

He makes good points,  he just fails to handle the big picture,  the scope of his points sound good until you take it up to a higher level of analysis.

The problem isn't that they're hellbent on mimicing GoW,  it's how they're mimicing GoW.  No one would fuss if combat were improved,  and ME's design was retained,  it's that ME's design was tossed in favor of implementing GoW's design.

-Pretty much all RPG elements were eliminated (Stats that actually did something,  inventory,  loot,  experience*,  levels**, consquences***)
-Ammo was added for no other reason than to be more shootery
-Weapon/Armor customization was eliminated****
-Everything revolved around combat,  and anything in between was made so short as to be non-existant (I want a fish!,  That mean guy at the door won't let me leave the citadel!)

The issue's never been that they're mimicing GoW,  it's that they eliminated pretty much everything else in the quest to mimic GoW.  Things would've been just fine if they'd fixed the weak systems and left the functioning ones in,  it's the complete switch that is the major issue and why it's alot closer to GoW than it is ME.

*Experience in ME2 is completely irrelevant.  You can do an incredibly difficult side mission and get 50xps out of it,  do an incredibly easy story mission and it hands you a level pretty much everytime.  It's obvious that the intention was to only give a level or *maybe* two to those who did side missions,  but give everyone skill points for every story mission.  It doesn't care how many critters you kill,  or how you resolve the mission,  everyone gets the same thing no matter what.  At that point,  it ceases to be an Experience system and becomes "Do a story mission,  get points!",  which is very anti-RPG.

**Levels are irrelevant.  You kill a YMIR at level 2 with starter weapons,  he's about as hard as it gets.  So at that point,  you can kill everything in the game if you could see it.  As such,  the levels perform no real function,  if you can already do everything at the very begining,  then there's no difference between level 2 and level 30.

***You can hear Shepherd say something nice,  or hear him say something mean,  but in almost every instance,  everyone gets the same results,  and no one reacts to the personality you're demonstrating,  even when it conflicts with their own.  Contrast this to earlier Bioware games where the NPC's would conflict with you if you didn't mesh with their personalities.  Now you can do whatever you want without consequence.

****Just because there's different types of weapons doesn't mean they're relevant.  Since the starter weapons kill what's pretty much the hardest thing you face in the game,  the weapons are essentially irrelevant.  Grab whichever one looks best to you and you'll be perfectly fine.  The armor is even less relevant,  all of the bonuses are completely insignificant.

[TuringPoint]

Gatt9 wrote...

*Experience in ME2 is completely irrelevant.  You can do an incredibly difficult side mission and get 50xps out of it,  do an incredibly easy story mission and it hands you a level pretty much everytime.  It's obvious that the intention was to only give a level or *maybe* two to those who did side missions,  but give everyone skill points for every story mission.  It doesn't care how many critters you kill,  or how you resolve the mission,  everyone gets the same thing no matter what.  At that point,  it ceases to be an Experience system and becomes "Do a story mission,  get points!",  which is very anti-RPG.

**Levels are irrelevant.  You kill a YMIR at level 2 with starter weapons,  he's about as hard as it gets.  So at that point,  you can kill everything in the game if you could see it.  As such,  the levels perform no real function,  if you can already do everything at the very begining,  then there's no difference between level 2 and level 30.

***You can hear Shepherd say something nice,  or hear him say something mean,  but in almost every instance,  everyone gets the same results,  and no one reacts to the personality you're demonstrating,  even when it conflicts with their own.  Contrast this to earlier Bioware games where the NPC's would conflict with you if you didn't mesh with their personalities.  Now you can do whatever you want without consequence.

****Just because there's different types of weapons doesn't mean they're relevant.  Since the starter weapons kill what's pretty much the hardest thing you face in the game,  the weapons are essentially irrelevant.  Grab whichever one looks best to you and you'll be perfectly fine.  The armor is even less relevant,  all of the bonuses are completely insignificant.

All solid criticisms.  However, the game that is being described is not a Gears of War clone.  If they were trying to do that they could have easily done a much better job with far more ease.  Right?  I mean, they're using essentially the same engine.  

When I do a new game + with one of my characters, I don't find myself missing the character progression.  The gameplay as a shooter stands on its own well enough.  Bioware aimed for this and they were successful.

That doesn't mean I disbelieve in character progression.  I'm simply presenting information.

I do find myself disappointed, fairly consistently, bringing up the power menu.  My squad members of have two, maybe three different skills that are usable.  This helps to reduce the squad powers menu to little more than trying to get the shield bar, biotic, or armor bars down faster than the enemy can get your defenses down.  It also means Shepard's abilities carry far more weight relative to his squadmates.  

Modifié par Alocormin, 04 septembre 2011 - 03:25 .

[RocketManSR2]

By creating this topic, TC, you have caused many pointless comparisons by trolls and legit posters alike. Smooth move.

Edit: Made past tense.

Modifié par RocketManSR2, 04 septembre 2011 - 03:29 .

[Tommy6860]

Gatt9 wrote...

FlyingWalrus wrote...

> OP speaks sense
> OP will be ignored

That is how things work on the Bioware Sociopathy Network.

He makes good points,  he just fails to handle the big picture,  the scope of his points sound good until you take it up to a higher level of analysis.

The problem isn't that they're hellbent on mimicing GoW,  it's how they're mimicing GoW.  No one would fuss if combat were improved,  and ME's design was retained,  it's that ME's design was tossed in favor of implementing GoW's design.

-Pretty much all RPG elements were eliminated (Stats that actually did something,  inventory,  loot,  experience*,  levels**, consquences***)
-Ammo was added for no other reason than to be more shootery
-Weapon/Armor customization was eliminated****
-Everything revolved around combat,  and anything in between was made so short as to be non-existant (I want a fish!,  That mean guy at the door won't let me leave the citadel!)

The issue's never been that they're mimicing GoW,  it's that they eliminated pretty much everything else in the quest to mimic GoW.  Things would've been just fine if they'd fixed the weak systems and left the functioning ones in,  it's the complete switch that is the major issue and why it's alot closer to GoW than it is ME.

*Experience in ME2 is completely irrelevant.  You can do an incredibly difficult side mission and get 50xps out of it,  do an incredibly easy story mission and it hands you a level pretty much everytime.  It's obvious that the intention was to only give a level or *maybe* two to those who did side missions,  but give everyone skill points for every story mission.  It doesn't care how many critters you kill,  or how you resolve the mission,  everyone gets the same thing no matter what.  At that point,  it ceases to be an Experience system and becomes "Do a story mission,  get points!",  which is very anti-RPG.

**Levels are irrelevant.  You kill a YMIR at level 2 with starter weapons,  he's about as hard as it gets.  So at that point,  you can kill everything in the game if you could see it.  As such,  the levels perform no real function,  if you can already do everything at the very begining,  then there's no difference between level 2 and level 30.

***You can hear Shepherd say something nice,  or hear him say something mean,  but in almost every instance,  everyone gets the same results,  and no one reacts to the personality you're demonstrating,  even when it conflicts with their own.  Contrast this to earlier Bioware games where the NPC's would conflict with you if you didn't mesh with their personalities.  Now you can do whatever you want without consequence.

****Just because there's different types of weapons doesn't mean they're relevant.  Since the starter weapons kill what's pretty much the hardest thing you face in the game,  the weapons are essentially irrelevant.  Grab whichever one looks best to you and you'll be perfectly fine.  The armor is even less relevant,  all of the bonuses are completely insignificant.

I somewhat agree, making ME2 analogous to GoW is a bit much though, maybe the mechanics are somewhat similar, but then so are quite a few games now. But overall, I think you're taking very basic elements and generalizing it as the whole and that simply isn't true. Marcus cannot talk to his companions, cannot visit them in their quarters, cannot feel for their families, etc, see what I mean? Whether you disagree or not, those are RPG aspects. I agree that ME2 stripped away many of the RPG apsects that were in ME, and I still get annoyed by that fact and ME2 isn't near as good the game as is ME, IMO..

But I take a little exception to your *** claim about no consequences with NPC conflicts. They do have consequences and they can be made from a few different choices, or just simply ignoring a choice.

(ME2 SPOILERS; BE WARNED): Example, take the Miri/Jack conflict that happens when both Miri's and Jack's LMs are completed. If you choose to side with Jack in the argument using the "Renegade" option, Miri will want no further discussion with you and you lose her loyalty, which will (or can) result in her death later on.  But, you can go back to her and coax her into thinking you sided with Jack becasue Jack isn't as mature as Miri is, and then Miri makes a statement that she should have known that Shep really wouldn't turn on Miri. Paragon choices results in both being happy. Or you can just not make any P/R choice and choose the defined route which cannot be changed.

Modifié par Tommy6860, 04 septembre 2011 - 03:25 .

[Gromnir]

Gatt9 wrote...

He makes good points,  he just fails to handle the big picture,  the scope of his points sound good until you take it up to a higher level of analysis.

The problem isn't that they're hellbent on mimicing GoW,  it's how they're mimicing GoW.  No one would fuss if combat were improved,  and ME's design was retained,  it's that ME's design was tossed in favor of implementing GoW's design.

-Pretty much all RPG elements were eliminated (Stats that actually did something,  inventory,  loot,  experience*,  levels**, consquences***)
-Ammo was added for no other reason than to be more shootery
-Weapon/Armor customization was eliminated****
-Everything revolved around combat,  and anything in between was made so short as to be non-existant (I want a fish!,  That mean guy at the door won't let me leave the citadel!)

The issue's never been that they're mimicing GoW,  it's that they eliminated pretty much everything else in the quest to mimic GoW.  Things would've been just fine if they'd fixed the weak systems and left the functioning ones in,  it's the complete switch that is the major issue and why it's alot closer to GoW than it is ME.

*Experience in ME2 is completely irrelevant.  You can do an incredibly difficult side mission and get 50xps out of it,  do an incredibly easy story mission and it hands you a level pretty much everytime.  It's obvious that the intention was to only give a level or *maybe* two to those who did side missions,  but give everyone skill points for every story mission.  It doesn't care how many critters you kill,  or how you resolve the mission,  everyone gets the same thing no matter what.  At that point,  it ceases to be an Experience system and becomes "Do a story mission,  get points!",  which is very anti-RPG.

**Levels are irrelevant.  You kill a YMIR at level 2 with starter weapons,  he's about as hard as it gets.  So at that point,  you can kill everything in the game if you could see it.  As such,  the levels perform no real function,  if you can already do everything at the very begining,  then there's no difference between level 2 and level 30.

***You can hear Shepherd say something nice,  or hear him say something mean,  but in almost every instance,  everyone gets the same results,  and no one reacts to the personality you're demonstrating,  even when it conflicts with their own.  Contrast this to earlier Bioware games where the NPC's would conflict with you if you didn't mesh with their personalities.  Now you can do whatever you want without consequence.

****Just because there's different types of weapons doesn't mean they're relevant.  Since the starter weapons kill what's pretty much the hardest thing you face in the game,  the weapons are essentially irrelevant.  Grab whichever one looks best to you and you'll be perfectly fine.  The armor is even less relevant,  all of the bonuses are completely insignificant.

* There has been a lot of debate on the experience system on these boards: kill-based vs mission-based.  They each have their merits, but I can't agree that "Do a story mission, get points!" is anti-RPG.  A LOT of RPGs give XP when completing a quest.  This is essentially the same thing.  Also, its nice to remove the XP focus from killing per se and focus it on actually getting something accomplished.  This is more important in games that have alternates to killing (e.g. stealth, diplomacy), but the point stands.

** The YMIR mech may be one of the tougher enemies, but this is very far from one of the most difficult encounters.  Even if you did have the power to tackle everything in the game, gaining levels would give you more powers and therefore more versatility.  Actually, I rather like the idea of reaching full "power" at relatively low levels, with the extra levels just making your bag of tricks bigger.

*** Agreed.  This is "mildly" reflected in the few loyalty missions you can botch, but overall it doesn't actually matter what you do.  The red text and blue text do the same thing.

**** The weapons are good in that there are no clear "winners", which is a contrast from ME1 (I'm looking at YOU Spectre gear).  They definitely do play differently, with differing dmg, accuracy, rof, and ammo capacities.  Do you want to precision strike or spray bullets?  The functional differences in the armor aren't flashy, but I would hardly say they're insignificant.

[Savber100]

*glances at the ME3's 57 powers, 60 levels, and 178 points*

Ignore THAT!

ME3 is like GoW and Halo because it has an OMNI-BLADE!

herp derp.

[Tommy6860]

Savber100 wrote...

*glances at the ME3's 57 powers, 60 levels, and 178 points*

Ignore THAT!

ME3 is like GoW and Halo because it has an OMNI-BLADE!

herp derp.

The Omni-blade is a clear rip-off off the Energy Sword from Halo, that's evident. It's appraent from that aslo, that they are trying to win over Halo fans into playing ME3.

Modifié par Tommy6860, 04 septembre 2011 - 03:53 .

[Scorpion1O1]

I don't think BioWare is ripping off anyone they are simply improving their melee mechanics and that is a logical direction considering the lore of the omni-tool as in it's on the players arm. The only other solution is to either have Shepard switch weapons to a melee exclusive weapon or do some punching/kicking/takedown action.

Having said all that—considering how Mass Effect 3 has peen presented so far as a war game in a sci-fi universe with very little intelligent, innovative science fiction story and ethical conflict revealed it's understandable why people compare it to Gears of War. Those who say that probably just want to be herd so the game doesn't turn out that way. I for one do not want a sci-fi game that can be easily take place in a World War II game.