Hey all,
At one point I did a Q&A thread, I had fun with that, I figured I would do another one and see how this goes.
FYI, I am on Dragon Age Inquisition now so my expose to next Mass Effect is very low, and I cant speak much about that project as well. Also store question will generally be "dodged" sorry I cant speak on that.
Otherwise ask away 
P.S. it is in this sub-forum because this is where I am best known
Can I count on you to push my agenda for melee weapons in the next ME?!
I wouldnt put money on that, I would be more likely to go to the new IP
What went through your mind when you were making the Reegar?
I had very little to do with the DLC process, I was consulted a bit more for Retaliation and Reckoning, but prior to that my role kept me busy on live and patches.
Given the success of ME3 multiplayer, will we be getting a dedicated server for ME4 multiplayer?
I literally know next to nothing about the next mass effect except the name
I see, so do you like hummus in your kebab?
Okay....
I like hummus but have not had it in a kebab
Would you agree with the view that most powers are relatively underwhelming once you you level up the good guns?
Depends how you mean by most powers are relatively underwhelming,
I would argue that powers do not have the potential that weapons do. IE you have active abilities, passive abilities, gear, weapon consumable, ammo consumable, and gun mods 10 levels. Whereas powers you have Passive, Levels (which are incredibly easy to get), limited gear, limited mods.
So yes I think that the upper echelon for guns is indeed higher and left powers behind (mostly for more experienced players).
I personally always saw powers as a means for players to get an incredible increase in power early on,
Basically the concept of multiple balance curves, over time.
Powers were first to give you a boost
Weapon Mods/Common Weapons were Second
Gold Weapons, and gear were Third
UR were fourth
Dont get me wrong I think there are powers that were left behind with power creep
Maybe not directly, but the idea's already been planted. You've already paid dividends, sir. *hat tip*. Thanks for sticking wit' us crazies! It's the charm isn't it? We're nothing, if not "charming". Ha ha.
Just wondering. Should I make DA:I my first Dragon Age game? An open question to all. I like games where you can really get in there and mix it up. People who know me, know I like to be about this "" (if you're curious as to what's there, it's nothing. I don't want any space between me and the enemy) far from the enemy, and I like to style on 'em as well (I was put in heaven when the N7 Slayer was released). Is that possible in DA:I?
I'll tell you the ownerships I have on DA:I which will show you I have very little insight into DA:I as well.
My 3 main owernships (from Tech QA) is Infrastructure (think of build systems), GUIs (I basically have a test level of all the GUIs in game, so I can rapidly hit them), and Next Gen consoles. In the case of next Gen consoles I do stuff like, disc install checks, vita remote play, using suspend feature etc. So non of these really mean I am in the game too much to try and sell you. I mean I think the game is good from what I have seen, but I am not going to try and sell you something that you potentially know more about than me 
I enjoyed the experience and I still play, however there is something that I wish was in the Mutiplayer: pretty much each character can do combos, but I wish there was a combo that was more powerful but that required more coordination among more players, like "superbiotic punch" when rave/warp and DC hit together... something for big boom!
Thought?
For some think like that, perhaps we could have done before the game shipped. The only thing is you mentioned DC wasnt even in the game when we shipped so that would have been difficult. Plus you basically need to have 2 DoTs from what you are saying, and then you get frustrated because the person potentially detonating might go early and they ****** you off because they arent doing it right.
Not to mention something like that would have a performance hit, and there were times during development we were running out of memory and took a lot of tweaking to get it back in check.
Can you try to convince the ME4 devs to put an end of line reference into ME4?
Best bet is to try and convince manveer on twitter.
Seeing how well MP 'trains' people, would you be up for "promoting" more & higher difficulty settings in SP in next Mass Effect?
I was never doing Insanity modes, after MP boot camp I was falling asleep during half of Insanity fights
I could see that happening, but it is hard to make things more difficult without just making things bullet sponges. You cant just randomly change AI patterns, or simply add more (memory and all).
Well what is it?
Last I heard it was called NDA
Why does the Batarian Adept have "Shields"?
I unno, embarrassing confession I didnt even know that there was barriers and shields on players I just called them all shields until about a month after we shipped the game (this is what happens when you are tech QA)
In your opinion, the most ovepowered/broken:
- Kit
- Weapon
- Power
- Piece of gear
Geth Trooper (long range with movement, can hide in a corner and just melt stuff)
Acolyte (Basically a free weapon, that with cyro ammo can stop all 'mooks' and basically negate half the ability of larger enemies)
Snap Freeze (Area, stopping ability, and explosions)
Grenade (If you are in a map, like rio, you dont need to fire your weapon)
Well they are effectively identical. The only difference Argent cares about is that barriers don't seem to take damage from Prime/Atlas death blossom. I assume that to be a bug, but since I have you captive here I might as well ask if you can confirm it.
That would be one I would need to ask the gameplay team to confirm or not.
Was there ever a thought towards remaking the Tactical Cloak and if yes, what would it have looked like?
I dont think that ever came up in a balance meeting
Anyways off for night will respond tomorrow for more
What is your personal opinion on PvP in the next Mass Effect? Just opinion.
Personally I am not a fan of PvP in general, anyone who can directly influence my fun on a game is a negative thing
What difficulty did you balance devices for? because it feels like they are balanced on bronze. Have any of you developers tried wave 10 devices on jade on platinum?
I believe during development people mainly played silver, the example you listed didnt occur during development because both Jade and Platinum were introduced in DLC
What would be your top ME3MP refrences you'd like in ME4?
Drells hogging grenades? Infiltraitors who cloak for no reason besides 'roids?
I'd die laughing if we got on mission with Grunt and he kicked a Krogan out of a shuttle because "HE WASN'T WEARING ANY GEAR!" Or you and your crew did a vote to literally kick someone out of shuttle in space, and a red "X" popped up with each raised hand. A Vorcha yelling "FLAME ALL THINGS" and having your character complain they're being blinded. An A.I. that said "End of Line" when things got too stupid. When you first have your "Shepard" and you're female, have a scene where on the crew asks "Are you a grill?!"
Things of that nature.
Personally for me, the rippers
Also why does the collector "sniper" rifle have a range limit? If it was to balance the damage why did the gun need a buff?
If I had to take a guess, I would say performance, the "edge" of levels can be very far away and the VFX go the entire length of the beam meaning the further the shot the bigger performance hit you get.
What were the more common reasons for each balance change? (How many people were using the kit/weapon, how op/up it was in the team's view, randomly spicing things up for the playerbase, something else, etc.)
Mainly team play, we would sit down in a row and say "what did you play this weekend", how was it etc. We looked at player numbers for some things and then we went and tried them ourselves and gauged it based on that.
ok, 1 more.
Why weren't Cain Mines balanced?
I would say likely end of cycle if time went on, we probably would have adjusted them but basically we said once the last map pack came out we only had a few more balance changes we were doing.
Why did you guys only change the damage of guns in balance changes? A lot of guns didn't need a damage buff they needed a recoil or accuracy buff.
For example the revenant has pretty decent damage but has an average ROF, terrible accuracy, terrible recoil and slows down the user when it's fired. Buffing the damage did basically nothing for that weapon.
I am not really sure, I am guessing in the case of something like the revenant it was meant as take cover and use it
Did explosive ammo ever cross the team doing the balance changes, if so, how were they approaching it ?
Also any snippets on the dragoons supposed monologues .
I had brought up explosive ammo a few times, and they just never were agreed on.
As for the dragoon I dont know what you mean
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