176 réponses à ce sujet

[Omega-202]

onelifecrisis wrote...

Look I really don't mind whether they have a reload button or a cooldown timer, either is fine; I just don't want to have to run around picking up clips.

You're doing something wrong if that's an issue for you.  

Switch weapons, aim better, make better use of powers, pick a better selection of weapons that give larger ammo pools, remember where the large preset ammo stocks are in each mission.

Its really not difficult even on Insanity.  If you're going around and only using the Widow (with the Locust and Carnifex in reserve) I have no sympathy for you.  You're playing wrong.  If you're using the Mattock, Viper, Predator and Scimitar and still running out of ammo then you should be playing on a lower difficulty.  

[Wulfram]

mango smoothie wrote...

     If the game that has a 30 second reload has the gameplay to match with it then yes I have no problem with it. Mass Effect has been about fast gameplay and so I want a fast and challenging way to get back in the fight. only way in ME1 to get fast gameplay was to have mods that made it never overheat, that gets rid of challenge.

Or you can just learn to pace yourself a bit, rather than getting stuck in overheat.  Just leave occasional short gaps in your fire, or shoot your pistol at a measured pace rather than going automatic.

[crimzontearz]

thermal clips make no sense without a codex entry specifying they also provide more power to the gun they "service"


seriously......Bioware should just retcon this and go for a simple active cool down system ala GoW2-3

[onelifecrisis]

Omega-202 wrote...

onelifecrisis wrote...

Look I really don't mind whether they have a reload button or a cooldown timer, either is fine; I just don't want to have to run around picking up clips.

You're doing something wrong
Its really not difficult
You're playing wrong

Thank you, Factmaster.

[Wulfram]

Omega-202 wrote...

Its really not difficult even on Insanity. 

The lack of difficulty in not running out of ammo is precisely what makes picking up ammo after battle such a pointless makework activity which should be scrapped.

[SovereignWillReturn]

I like the Thermal Clip System, because I was so Easily able to break the ME1 guns to god-like status

No Recoil no Heat Assualt Rifles
No Recoil 5 shot Snipers
Spamfesting shotguns with no recoil or heat.

I got through Insanity easily with no New Game+, mainly because of the buyback glitch.

[Omega-202]

Wulfram wrote...

The lack of difficulty in not running out of ammo is precisely what makes picking up ammo after battle such a pointless makework activity which should be scrapped.

But its not just that its not difficult, its a non-issue.  The door leading out of every large encounter room had a stack of double clips to refill your stock.  If you played the encounter well, you used less ammo than what you have to walk past just to get to the next section.  

Even in one of the most ammo starved sections of the game (Mordin's recruitment, balcony Vorcha rockets room) the lack of ammo is purposeful.  It keeps you from camping the opposite balcony and picking the enemies off as they come in through the single door choke point.  The same can be said about other low ammo sections.  It forces you to tactically move across the battlefield where in an overheat scenario you could just set up camp and wait for the enemies to funnel into view.  There are plenty of scearnios where you can do that due to large ammo caches but those are designed that way.  

In ME1, the developers and players realized that the most successful way to clear out the generic warehouse maps was to just open the door, stand in the doorway and just wait for the enemies to stupidly wander into view while shouting "I WILL DESTROY YOU".  That's bad gameplay.  In ME2, the same scenario would have forced you to actually run into the room, seek cover and move about in order to find more ammo.  

If the trade off for this gameplay benefit is having to make a short detour at the end of an encounter to hit up the stack of clips near the door, then so be it.   

[Wulfram]

Omega-202 wrote...

In ME2, the same scenario would have forced you to actually run into the room, seek cover and move about in order to find more ammo. 

Only if you suck.  Or have ill chosen weapons, I guess.

[Jimbe2693]

I don't mind thermal clips, as long as they give me a big ammo reserve. Like in ME2, my SMG always has plentiful ammo, while my Carnifax pistol runs out trying to kill a few enemies (on insanity).

It would be nice if they gave us a weapon without a thermal clip system for nostalgic ME1 players though. I miss the overheating sound. Perhaps make it a rare weapon mod.

Modifié par Jimbe2693, 17 novembre 2011 - 08:15 .

[RolandX9]

Omega-202 wrote...

You can't argue that the ammo system encouraged good gameplay and strategy.  Its simply a fact and arguing otherwise is wrong.

1) Please look up the word "fact." 2) ME3 is going to have a Narrative difficulty option. "Good gameplay" is obviously not relevant to the larger design. 3) If you like clips, just set the fracking switch "on." Good gods, it amazes me how much some people want to deny other people their preferred gameplay style.

Look, the thermal clip switch is a gorram compromise. For me, at least, this isn't about infinite ammo per se. Yeah, it'd be a relief to not have to hunt for little boxes every few minutes, but that's only nice to have. It's about the unrelenting stupidity of the idea that in two years, every last gun in the galaxy that uses the old method is just gone. Thermal clips are part of the ME setting now. I wouldn't try to retcon them out completely. The origin even makes a certain amount of sense -- geth could carry far more clips than organics (hollow out the right part of the body and you're looking at an insane clip capacity), and they could easily calculate how many clips they'd need before either succeeding in the mission objective or knowing they've failed. Plus, they could just upload to escape and blow up their bodies as a sort of final strike. The Collective has achieved consensus; they switch to clips.

People don't work like that. They'd argue, like we're doing. Some people would refuse to ditch their heat-management guns. They'd be for sale on c-Bay or Morlan's List. After only two years, there would still be tons of the old guns in the galaxy. On top of that, the idea that the major governments would refuse to assign/allow their soldiers to carry cheap pistols/SMGs as ping-guns for after the clips run out is insane, even given the level of blindness we've seen in the governments of the galaxy. Sure, the average human and turian would likely still have to deal with a cheap Avenger/Armax AR with thermal clips, but N7s? Asari commandos? STG units? They'd spend the money and get the best equipment available.

What I'd actually like to see is a gun mod that switches firearms back to the old system. Where other mods would increase the maximum capacity of a clip, they would instead reduce the amount of heat generated per shot on the old-school heat meter. Firing rate would be modified to compensate, balancing the benefit of the infinite ammo and arguably justifying the existence of the clip. There's two problems with that: one, it would probably take considerably more work to include such a mod than to simply add a toggle to the menu, and two, the clip is obviously a retcon trying really hard not to be a retcon. (Shepard missed the two years in which the clip became ubiquitous, and the first thing he says when he picks up a gun is to note the lack of clip? Yeah.) A lot of people are invested in the changeover, and it's clear that at least some of them work for Bioware and/or EA. This is a stylistic decision at least as much as a gameplay one, and the resistance to throwing we old-school fans a bone is both annoying and telling. (Geez, make the heat-meter mod DLC. Plenty of us would buy it.) A clip toggle isn't my favorite solution, but it would at least let me pretend that the militaries of the galaxy aren't made of stupid.

Edit: Just watched the Collector's Edition video on Gamestop's site. Heard the ME1 overheat sound. Squee!

Modifié par RolandX9, 17 novembre 2011 - 08:22 .

[JonathonPR]

For me its a part of the setting. If you can make a world that is interesting and then create mechanics that believably simulate that world then I am having fun. ME1 did that for me. The change to a conventional ammo system became sand in my enjoyment and has worn down the games credibility for me. If you have a firm grasp of how your games combat mechanics work you can design a level to accommodate them. Overheating and cool down rates could be tweaked to give the same pace as the ammo system.

For me the real problem was its inclusion in the setting. Imagine if in Dune they suddenly had star trek style warp drives and no longer needed spice for interstellar travel. The mechanics of a world and the consistent application of those mechanics to the story make for an immersive experience and a story that is generally more enjoyable over a longer real world time frame. This gives greater longevity to an IP. Does anyone want to hear the explanation of Midi-chlorians and the Force?

[onelifecrisis]

RolandX9 wrote...
Edit: Just watched the Collector's Edition video on Gamestop's site. Heard the ME1 overheat sound. Squee!

Huh? What? What? Where? What??? Link plz!

Edit: nvm I just saw it. Just subliminal advertising... probably.

Modifié par onelifecrisis, 17 novembre 2011 - 08:36 .

[olymind1]

i liked ME1 style better, but i had no problem with ME2 style, BUT i would like to see that the disposable universal heat sinks would be truly universal and disposable. Universal as if my shotgun runs out of heat sink why can't i use my pistol's "universal" heat sink for it. And disposable as if i have 2 more shots left in my shotgun, then i replace/drop the heat sink, then that 2 shots don't magically reappear in the stash/display, but disappears with the partially heated sink i just dropped. I would't mind either if the HUD would show how many heat sinks in total i have in the "backpack", not how many shots i can fire.

but i won't go raging, if they let it be as it is.

[Eckswhyzee]

olymind1 wrote...

i liked ME1 style better, but i had no problem with ME2 style, BUT i would like to see that the disposable universal heat sinks would be truly universal and disposable. Universal as if my shotgun runs out of heat sink why can't i use my pistol's "universal" heat sink for it. And disposable as if i have 2 more shots left in my shotgun, then i replace/drop the heat sink, then that 2 shots don't magically reappear in the stash/display, but disappears with the partially heated sink i just dropped. I would't mind either if the HUD would show how many heat sinks in total i have in the "backpack", not how many shots i can fire.

but i won't go raging, if they let it be as it is.

Does anyone have a source for the fact that thermal clips are universal? The Codex doesn't mention anything about it:

"It was long thought that personal weapons had plateaued in
performance, but the geth proved all theories wrong. Mathematically
reviewing their combat logs, the geth found that in an age of kinetic
barriers, most firefights were won by the side who could put the most
rounds down-range the fastest. But combatants were forced to
deliberately shoot slower to manage waste heat, or pause as their
weapons vented.
To eliminate this inefficiency, the geth
adopted detachable heat sinks known as thermal clips. While organic
arms manufacturers were initially doubtful this would produce a net
gain, a well-trained soldier can eject and swap thermal clips in under a
second. Faced with superior enemy firepower, organic armies soon
followed the geth's lead, and today's battlefields are littered with
these thermal clips."


It makes sense to me that a sniper rifle has very different heat dissipation requirements to an SMG, so why would they share thermal clips?


@OP

There's a plausible in-game reason no-one might use ME1-era overheating guns. And that's because the stopping power would be terrible. It's an example of the Red Queen effect (look it up on Wikipedia). Basically, as weapon stopping power and ROF increases thanks to thermal clip technology, manufacturers of personal defense systems such as armour hardsuits and kinetic barriers also imporve their systems. So even though you have this fancy new weapon technology, you aren't killing people any faster because their defenses have improved. So if you were to use a ME1 era gun you might be doing little to no damage in the ME3 era.


Of course, the above is just my own personal fan theory about why everyone uses thermal clips. And Jacob's loyalty mission? It is not spoken of in polite company......

[robarcool]

No matter what, no clip will probably not make a return, for if it does, they may have to make signigicant changes to keep things balanced.

Modifié par robarcool, 17 novembre 2011 - 09:30 .

[wizardryforever]

For those who whine about the lore change, consider this: Shepard has not been to the entire galaxy, not even the entire explored galaxy.  It's a huge jump to conclusions to say that there are no more overheat weapons anywhere in the galaxy.  Shepard just doesn't care enough to seek them out.  Maybe he noticed how things die just as easily when heat is flushed instantly instead of over time, and thus switched to the new system because that's what his allies and his enemies were doing.

And again, tediousness is in the eye of the beholder.  Some people see going a few steps out of their way as tedious, others think sorting through a massive inventory to fit the right mods in their weapons to be tedious.

[didymos1120]

JonathonPR wrote...

Imagine if in Dune they suddenly had star trek style warp drives and no longer needed spice for interstellar travel.

Well, then I'd assume they were using "thinking machines" again. Also, that pretty much happened in the later novels.

Modifié par didymos1120, 17 novembre 2011 - 10:08 .

[didymos1120]

Eckswhyzee wrote...

Does anyone have a source for the fact that thermal clips are universal?

Loading tip:

"State-of-the-art weapons use thermal clips to prevent overheating. Clips are a universal design, so use any you retrieve from combat areas or take from fallen enemies."

It was also in a cut, voiced Codex entry.

[Wulfram]

wizardryforever wrote...

For those who whine about the lore change, consider this: Shepard has not been to the entire galaxy, not even the entire explored galaxy.  It's a huge jump to conclusions to say that there are no more overheat weapons anywhere in the galaxy.  Shepard just doesn't care enough to seek them out.  Maybe he noticed how things die just as easily when heat is flushed instantly instead of over time, and thus switched to the new system because that's what his allies and his enemies were doing.

We've been to loads of places in the Terminus systems, to Tuchanka, to the Citadel and to Batarian space, to a planet that's been isolated from the galaxy for a decade and to the Collector base, and they all use thermal clips.  It might not fit the mathematical standard of proof, but it fits anything I'd consider a reasonable standard.

Modifié par Wulfram, 17 novembre 2011 - 10:13 .

[Sgt Stryker]

The ME2 gameplay mechanics also did not include the weapon and armor upgrades from ME1. Does that mean an entire galaxy-spanning arms industry ceased to exist in 2 years? Of course not. Especially since weapon upgrades are coming back in ME3.

[The Interloper]

I wouldn't mind.

[Yuoaman]

Overheat weapons are, from a real life standpoint, ****ing ridiculous. Designing your guns to continue running until THEY GET TOO HOT TO RUN is a dumb idea - thermal clips make perfect sense in both gameplay and the lore.

[Wulfram]

Yuoaman wrote...

Overheat weapons are, from a real life standpoint, ****ing ridiculous. Designing your guns to continue running until THEY GET TOO HOT TO RUN is a dumb idea - thermal clips make perfect sense in both gameplay and the lore.

With the sniper rifle it can sometimes be a good move to fire off two quick shots in a row and deal with the cooldown time.  For the pistol and assault rifle they would be easier to use effectively if they simply refused to fire if it would lead to overheating, so in effect if you kept your finger on the trigger too long then your rate of fire would decrease rather than leave you with a non functional weapon for a while. 

Thermal clips more or less make sense, but them functioning like ammo doesn't really.

[didymos1120]

Wulfram wrote...

Thermal clips more or less make sense, but them functioning like ammo doesn't really.

No, it does, it's just simplified for purposes of gameplay and ease of implementation (as was ME1's "Shots Before Overheat" stat). Basically, the "ammo" counter we see would be something like the average number of shots per thermal clip in some certain, standardized conditions (stuff like external temperatures, average rate of fire, assuming ideal weapon function, blah, blah, etc.). 

Modifié par didymos1120, 17 novembre 2011 - 11:13 .

[RolandX9]

Yuoaman wrote...

Overheat weapons are, from a real life standpoint, ****ing ridiculous. Designing your guns to continue running until THEY GET TOO HOT TO RUN is a dumb idea - thermal clips make perfect sense in both gameplay and the lore.

No. They. Don't.

Yes, it's kind of stupid not to install a hyper-simple VI in your gun to manage autofire so you don't overheat, but which is more stupid -- occasionally needing to vent your gun, or not being able to fire it in spite of the hundred-thousand shots left on your metal ammo block because you ran out of ceramic tiles?