16 réponses à ce sujet

[Silvair]

What exactly WAS the reason for switching to ammo instead of keeping the overheat system from ME1?

Not griping one way or the other, I prefer the overheat but am okay with this, but what was the actual reason? 

[Kristen Schanche]

This was a change made during Mass Effect 2, and had a few goals. While I wasn't involved at the time with all aspects of this change, it did a few things that stood out then, and stand out more now in multiplayer.

The first is adding new objectives to the field. Clips dropped from enemies, or placed in the environment can help move the player around, and provide extra incentive to explore and engage the space. With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker. There are a lot of other tools we can use to get the player moving around the space, but this is one of them, and it's done a good job of helping that dynamic. It also lets the guns that do still play on overheat stand out as unique and interesting in their own right.

The other was adding another interesting balance value to tweak on guns, extra balance levers like this help make a wider variety of weapons that feel functionally different from each other. While we could have done this with the overheat mechanic, the change to clips still opened up some additional options.

I believe there were other reasons as well, but hopefully this mostly answers your question!

[Simba501]

I prefer overheat as well.

Chris Schanche wrote...
This was a change made during Mass Effect 2, and had a few goals. While I wasn't involved at the time with all aspects of this change, it did a few things that stood out then, and stand out more now in multiplayer.
The first is adding new objectives to the field. Clips dropped from enemies, or placed in the environment can help move the player around, and provide extra incentive to explore and engage the space. With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker. There are a lot of other tools we can use to get the player moving around the space, but this is one of them, and it's done a good job of helping that dynamic. It also lets the guns that do still play on overheat stand out as unique and interesting in their own right.
The other was adding another interesting balance value to tweak on guns, extra balance levers like this help make a wider variety of weapons that feel functionally different from each other. While we could have done this with the overheat mechanic, the change to clips still opened up some additional options.
I believe there were other reasons as well, but hopefully this mostly answers your question!

Interesting.

Modifié par Simba501, 03 février 2013 - 12:26 .

[jakenou]

I'm not Bioware but just wanted to point out that they have included several cooldown/no-clip style weapons in the MP mix a la "mass accelerator" style. Otherwise, there is a story connection to why thermal clips became common starting in ME2.

Edit: Ninja'ed by Chris Schanche (and thanks for the response!)

Modifié par jkthunder, 03 février 2013 - 12:26 .

[exxtrooper]

In terms of lore, there's no real good reason as to why this is ;_;

[Draining Dragon]

Why did all old weapons spontaneously vanish?

[Maeson]

I also heard it was to do with streamlining to combat gameplay. Something about overheating causing unnecessary pauses in the middle of combat.

And true, the current overheat weapons stand out, they are a bit... wonky. It seems the guns have two stages of reload and you can actually "reload cancel" them into having LONGER reloads and that's weird. I honestly don't like these overheat weapons because of this.

I can say I partially agree with the change, it does make the combat feel more fluid and less "cooldown" based as if I was playing some decade old hack/slash game, but I would of loved if they had a hybrid system. Less clips, but you can wait for the clip to cool off rather then needing to reload every damn time. A sort of "Limited use instant cooldown"

[Cassandra Saturn]

Chris, had't you have thought about the way gameplay would evolve around this mechanic?
for example, you could replace the overheat and ammo with just most basic design, an weapon that doesn't overheat, or can't fire if don't have the thermal clips, instead of that, we could use energy clips, that allows gun to fire virtually an energy lasers that's being shot out of the gun. it's similar to ammo mechanic, but it's quite diffrent. the gun can't fire without energy power, so you would have a dead gun/powered down gun. you have to go for restocking or reclipping the gun with energy power clip to fire. that's pretty diffrent from the ammo clipping idea mechanic. i had thought of this in past, but was quite not sure how to employ that in a game designing plan. but it's certainly worth a try in new games. either way, it could serve in many ways.

[NatP]

exxtrooper wrote...

In terms of lore, there's no real good reason as to why this is ;_;

Yeah, this is the only reason some people don't like the change. Other than this, it's a clear improvement.

Modifié par NatP, 03 février 2013 - 12:35 .

[llandwynwyn]

Chris Schanche wrote...
With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker.

Funny, because I moved all over the place in ME1 (insanity) and was married to the cover on ME2(insanity). On weapons that didn't have much ammo I constantly worried I'd reach zero because there wasn't any ammo around. I remember ignoring enemies to look for ammo. ME3 wasn't that frustrating, except fot 'nades. I never knew when I'd get another one.

[kipac]

Draining Dragon wrote...

Why did all old weapons spontaneously vanish?

Rather than vanish, they are redesigned into carnifex, katana, avenger, mantis, etc.
Most of weapons in ME1 looks like that with just a change of name.

[DullahansXMark]

John Hackett wrote...

Chris, had't you have thought about the way gameplay would evolve around this mechanic?
for example, you could replace the overheat and ammo with just most basic design, an weapon that doesn't overheat, or can't fire if don't have the thermal clips, instead of that, we could use energy clips, that allows gun to fire virtually an energy lasers that's being shot out of the gun. it's similar to ammo mechanic, but it's quite diffrent. the gun can't fire without energy power, so you would have a dead gun/powered down gun. you have to go for restocking or reclipping the gun with energy power clip to fire. that's pretty diffrent from the ammo clipping idea mechanic. i had thought of this in past, but was quite not sure how to employ that in a game designing plan. but it's certainly worth a try in new games. either way, it could serve in many ways.

Wait, so it's kind of like you grab the clip, and you get infinite ammo as long as you don't overheat it? In which case you lose a clip and have to run over to an ammo crate to replace it?

Otherwise, I'm confused on how that's any different than thermal clips...

[Nydus Templar]

I'm pretty sure they also made the change to heighten tension in combat. In ME1, I only ever really felt threatened in the game early on with Husk/Creeper rushes because I didn't have the DPS/burst to bring them down, or with biotics who could simply constantly spam CC you and kill you at will. Even on insanity, I never felt threatened, because by that time I had a level 50+ Soldier with Adrenaline Rush and Spectre gear, and no combat was a challenge.

Fast forward to ME2 and combat was alot more strenuous even at max level with full gear. Enemies were tough and numerous, so even if you could drop them with relative ease, you still had to make smart use of available supplies in order to handle the full swarm. I can still remember being so thankful that I had the Geth Plasma Shotgun, the Phalanx, the Viper, and the Revenant on my Soldier, and I would switch between them constantly. It didn't matter on my non-soldiers because it was either an Infiltrator (where I could just go get ammo) or a power based class who didn't need it in the first place.

I agree with llandwynwyn, however, that if this was designed to get people out of cover, it was counter intuitive to the actual combat design, which basically glued you to a piece of cover or you were dead. Mass Effect 3 is better about this thanks to mobility increases, but you're still moving around in cover since any time out is tantamount to suicide.

I didn't have much issue with the ingame reasoning for this change. I'm sure it didn't fly with some people, but it makes sense to me why you didn't see alot of those weaker weapons in the hands of someone like Shepard or Cerberus. Using a disposable heat sink, more than just increasing rate of fire, would also allow for much more potent spikes in heat generation, as there'd be no concern over heat damage to a cooling mechanism. My only real concern is (and I loved that they played on this with Zaeed's mission) the safety of throwing around near molten bars of metal in combat.

Frankly, from talking with Wrex in the first game, I felt like the guns in ME1 were also a recent design, since he explicitly talked about running out of ammo, having to kill a bunch of mercs, and using their crap guns. I doubt highly he could've run out of ammo for his better weapons with the way guns were in ME1.

Also, and let's be honest here, a big part of it was probably widening the game's appeal. Reloading a gun, or watching one spit out spent casings (or thermal clips in the case of the Ymir) is a lot cooler than just pushing the button and then not pushing the button. Visually its a lot more stimulating to duck into cover and slap a fresh clip in than to just get in cover and do nothing. I'm sure that also played into the game play perspective. Call it 'busy work' while you're waiting for your shields to recharge, reloading a gun or two turned that from passive game play into active game play.

Just a few thoughts.

[Kittstalkur]

Chris Schanche wrote...

This was a change made during Mass Effect 2, and had a few goals. While I wasn't involved at the time with all aspects of this change, it did a few things that stood out then, and stand out more now in multiplayer.

The first is adding new objectives to the field. Clips dropped from enemies, or placed in the environment can help move the player around, and provide extra incentive to explore and engage the space. With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker. There are a lot of other tools we can use to get the player moving around the space, but this is one of them, and it's done a good job of helping that dynamic. It also lets the guns that do still play on overheat stand out as unique and interesting in their own right.

The other was adding another interesting balance value to tweak on guns, extra balance levers like this help make a wider variety of weapons that feel functionally different from each other. While we could have done this with the overheat mechanic, the change to clips still opened up some additional options.

I believe there were other reasons as well, but hopefully this mostly answers your question!

The funny thing, though, is that ME had plenty of incentive to explore already, aside from the incredibly linear level design on actual missions (the Mako sections were exploration incarnate, after all). There were various boxes and whatnot to loot for weapon mods, weapons, armor, etc.

ME2 became a lot more linear with the removal of the Mako and the reduction of things to find around the levels (generally two or three "credit nodes" and a handful of medigel/heavy weapon ammo boxes), while enemies would usually drop clips, or they'd be placed right along the main path. All we really got in return was the probing minigame, which didn't add a whole lot to the game aside from tedium. ME3 didn't really change much aside from giving everyone a grenade (just about) and making grenades a consumable themselves (again, since they were a consumable in 1).

What's genuinely pretty funny is that from an outside perspective, technology in the Mass Effect universe went backwards. It's this weird situation where the SUPER ADVANCED FINAL WEAPON from the Protheans is a self-cooling weapon like the ME1 guns, while everyone else ditched their infinite ammo Avenger for the new model the day it came out.

[Cassandra Saturn]

DullahansXMark wrote...

John Hackett wrote...

Chris, had't you have thought about the way gameplay would evolve around this mechanic?
for example, you could replace the overheat and ammo with just most basic design, an weapon that doesn't overheat, or can't fire if don't have the thermal clips, instead of that, we could use energy clips, that allows gun to fire virtually an energy lasers that's being shot out of the gun. it's similar to ammo mechanic, but it's quite diffrent. the gun can't fire without energy power, so you would have a dead gun/powered down gun. you have to go for restocking or reclipping the gun with energy power clip to fire. that's pretty diffrent from the ammo clipping idea mechanic. i had thought of this in past, but was quite not sure how to employ that in a game designing plan. but it's certainly worth a try in new games. either way, it could serve in many ways.

Wait, so it's kind of like you grab the clip, and you get infinite ammo as long as you don't overheat it? In which case you lose a clip and have to run over to an ammo crate to replace it?

Otherwise, I'm confused on how that's any different than thermal clips...

no, it's not like what you thought.
it would drain your clip to power the gun and to open fire. so in sense, your gun was dead/powered down, you'd need to reactivate it by reloading it with energy clips to power up your gun and resume shooting.yes it would drain the energy clip over the time so you'd need to keep yourself running and move fast to ensure you don't run out between shots and missed shots. etc etc.

[PhantomRipper]

Chris Schanche wrote...

This was a change made during Mass Effect 2, and had a few goals. While I wasn't involved at the time with all aspects of this change, it did a few things that stood out then, and stand out more now in multiplayer.

The first is adding new objectives to the field. Clips dropped from enemies, or placed in the environment can help move the player around, and provide extra incentive to explore and engage the space. With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker. There are a lot of other tools we can use to get the player moving around the space, but this is one of them, and it's done a good job of helping that dynamic. It also lets the guns that do still play on overheat stand out as unique and interesting in their own right.

The other was adding another interesting balance value to tweak on guns, extra balance levers like this help make a wider variety of weapons that feel functionally different from each other. While we could have done this with the overheat mechanic, the change to clips still opened up some additional options.

I believe there were other reasons as well, but hopefully this mostly answers your question!

Ok So I was thinking could the energy weapons for multiplayer have some sort of special attatchment to help reduce energy consumption?

[Silvair]

Kittstalkur wrote...

Chris Schanche wrote...

This was a change made during Mass Effect 2, and had a few goals. While I wasn't involved at the time with all aspects of this change, it did a few things that stood out then, and stand out more now in multiplayer.

The first is adding new objectives to the field. Clips dropped from enemies, or placed in the environment can help move the player around, and provide extra incentive to explore and engage the space. With an overheat system it's easy for the player to get comfortable with one piece of cover, hang back, or bunker. There are a lot of other tools we can use to get the player moving around the space, but this is one of them, and it's done a good job of helping that dynamic. It also lets the guns that do still play on overheat stand out as unique and interesting in their own right.

The other was adding another interesting balance value to tweak on guns, extra balance levers like this help make a wider variety of weapons that feel functionally different from each other. While we could have done this with the overheat mechanic, the change to clips still opened up some additional options.

I believe there were other reasons as well, but hopefully this mostly answers your question!

The funny thing, though, is that ME had plenty of incentive to explore already, aside from the incredibly linear level design on actual missions (the Mako sections were exploration incarnate, after all). There were various boxes and whatnot to loot for weapon mods, weapons, armor, etc.

ME2 became a lot more linear with the removal of the Mako and the reduction of things to find around the levels (generally two or three "credit nodes" and a handful of medigel/heavy weapon ammo boxes), while enemies would usually drop clips, or they'd be placed right along the main path. All we really got in return was the probing minigame, which didn't add a whole lot to the game aside from tedium. ME3 didn't really change much aside from giving everyone a grenade (just about) and making grenades a consumable themselves (again, since they were a consumable in 1).

What's genuinely pretty funny is that from an outside perspective, technology in the Mass Effect universe went backwards. It's this weird situation where the SUPER ADVANCED FINAL WEAPON from the Protheans is a self-cooling weapon like the ME1 guns, while everyone else ditched their infinite ammo Avenger for the new model the day it came out.

I do have to agree with that.  I get the intended effect being to get people move around more, but it actually had the exact OPPOSITE effect.

Now you can just unload your shots into everything ,making them drop, without having to pace your shots to avoid overheating like in ME1.

And the ammo is always right in the walkway, so there's nothing to go "explore", for either.  Whereas in ME1 there were crates with stuff in them all over the place, so there was a ton of exploration and roaming.

As for cover...barely used it in ME1.  Was moving around too much because the enemies would just flank you otherwise.  In ME2 and ME3, you just stay behind cover the entire time and the enemies will just come at you from ahead and funnel into your shots.  And so ammo isn't even an issue because then you take 2 steps forward and there's piles of ammo right in the hallway.


So the only real benefit seems to be "To have a reload animation".  Wasn't the intended result, but that seems to be what happened.

And yeah, does feel like a step back.  ME1, had guns with infinite ammo with the only drawback being that you need to pace yourself, while in ME2, we are inexplicably back to facing the "run out of ammo" issue.

The lore reason being that the Geth switched to that method so they could overwhelm.  And that's okay for THEM, because geth THEMSELVES are expendable, so it doesn't really matter if they run out of ammo.

But everyone else following suit is dang near suicide.  Living creatures cant be replaced as easily, so running out of ammo is a huge issue.