91 réponses à ce sujet

[Shinobu]

I didn't like it. It reduced in-game choices to generic points which boiled down to a handful of ending outcomes that were basically the same no matter what you had done -- unless you intentionally screwed up. I felt like it trivialized the war effort by making it into a grocery list. I would have preferred a "suicide mission" style ending that took previous choices into consideration and showed the different potential outcomes, though I understand that might have been too difficult with the huge amount of variables. If the ending had been based on even a few key choices (Geth v. Quarians, Save or Destroy the Rachni/heretics/cure/collector base) it would have felt much more meaningful.

 

Requiring MP to increase readiness was another sore point for me, especially initially when it was impossible to get all outcomes without MP. (I have since sunk 1000+ hours into MP, so it's not the MP I dislike, just the requirement that those who want access to all content must play it.)

[SilJeff]

Its execution was terrible in my honest opinion. If they decide to bring it back, please, please, please... Try to include some more scenes in final missions so we can feel the impact of our choices.

 

Agreed completely, though I'd also like to see a news channel be available from your personal cabin in whatever will be our main hub/ship in the next game that allows us to see news programs showing some of the smaller inputs to the system in use throughout the game [for example, should you find that Batarian lawmaker you save from a Batarian world in the Leviathan DLC, you'd later see a short video on that new channel of him giving a speech encouraging Batarians to help the cause]

[Raizo]

This isn't very sensible. DA2 had similar fetch quests without any EMS system. ME2 had several as well. And ME1 has plenty of pointless missions that aren't fetch quests. Given the existence of XP and cash, you hardly need another reward mechanism to do that sort of quest.

For better and for worse most if not all RPGs have fetch quests, when executed properly a fetch quest feels like helping someone with an important task and your reward is in helping that person out or retrieving something important, all the fetch quests in ME3 just felt like I was really helping anyone, there was no emotional investment in any of ME3's npc's, the only reason why I even bother with any of these is because of the EMS/War asset system, as such it feels more like an obligation than something I chose to do.

I didn't like it. It reduced in-game choices to generic points which boiled down to a handful of ending outcomes that were basically the same no matter what you had done -- unless you intentionally screwed up. I felt like it trivialized the war effort by making it into a grocery list. I would have preferred a "suicide mission" style ending that took previous choices into consideration and showed the different potential outcomes, though I understand that might have been too difficult with the huge amount of variables. If the ending had been based on even a few key choices (Geth v. Quarians, Save or Destroy the Rachni/heretics/cure/collector base) it would have felt much more meaningful.
 
Requiring MP to increase readiness was another sore point for me, especially initially when it was impossible to get all outcomes without MP. (I have since sunk 1000+ hours into MP, so it's not the MP I dislike, just the requirement that those who want access to all content must play it.)

Bravo. Shinobu gets it.

[Fetunche]

Don't like, prefer the choices you make in the game to affect the outcome.

[MissMayhem96]

It took me a while to figure out the system, but having to play Multiplayer (which at the time I didn't like) to be able to increase the overall proficiency of my assets was kinda cheap. I didn't have great internet connection and made it damn near impossible. Luckily, I was able to use the game app on my phone to send out ground teams to take certain spots within a 1, 3, 5 hour process.

 

It makes playing ME3 more like a chore to me.

[KaiserShep]

It makes playing ME3 more like a chore to me.

 

Yeah, this was a problem. Nowadays, the only reason to bother with the game app is to just get the dialogue with Hackett about whether or not the allied forces are doing well against the reapers, but still. It's kind of annoying.

[AlanC9]

I don't quite follow. You don't actually need the Readiness boost for anything, so why bother with either the app or MP unless you like them better than scanning? If you don't like that Hackett line, don't ask the question.

[AlanC9]

For better and for worse most if not all RPGs have fetch quests, when executed properly a fetch quest feels like helping someone with an important task and your reward is in helping that person out or retrieving something important, all the fetch quests in ME3 just felt like I was really helping anyone, there was no emotional investment in any of ME3's npc's, the only reason why I even bother with any of these is because of the EMS/War asset system, as such it feels more like an obligation than something I chose to do.

You mean you wouldn't do those quests for XP? Or cash? In ME2, did you return the locket from Miranda's LM, the smuggling evidence from Samara's RM, etc. and so forth? Or are you saying that EMS makes such quests feel mandatory rather than optional?

Edit: it occurs to me that these fetch quests evolved to solve two problems for Bio. In traditional RPG designs you give out loot rewards as a reward for map exploration, but ME2 and ME3 are fairly limited in how much different loot they can give out. (Not as much of a factor for DA2, though.) And Bio hubs never have as much dialogue as people like, so the fetch quests give background chatter and a bit of interactivity. I don't think the devs appreciated that while it's all one big bag of content to them, players will compare something called a "mission" to other "missions," and something that doesn't have much content to it is going to come up looking cheap. We see a similar psychological effect with the one-liners from squadmates on the Normandy.

[themikefest]

Also the hidden war assets that some may not know about.

 

If your ems it at 2900 and "save" Anderson, the player receives 200 war assets giving him/her the breath scene

 

If your ems is at 3199 and let TIM kill Anderson, the player loses 100 war assets which prevents the player from getting the breath scene. EMS has to be at 3200 or higher

[MEuniverse]

It's unlikely that we'll be fighting another galaxy wide war ever again, and that's about the only scenario the EMS system is good for.

But the concept could work on smaller threats/wars, like within a cluster maybe?

[rapscallioness]

Agreed completely, though I'd also like to see a news channel be available from your personal cabin in whatever will be our main hub/ship in the next game that allows us to see news programs showing some of the smaller inputs to the system in use throughout the game [for example, should you find that Batarian lawmaker you save from a Batarian world in the Leviathan DLC, you'd later see a short video on that new channel of him giving a speech encouraging Batarians to help the cause]

I was going off to sleep, but I had to log back in to say I love this idea. I want this in the next game. A television news channel where I can See how some things played out. In my cabin would be preferable. Get updates as you go along. People's reactions to stuff. Plz!

 

As far as the ems/wa:

 

 

too many numbers, not enough emotional connection and not enough visual representation. and too hand hold-y. i don't want some graph telling me i'm not prepared enough. let me figure it out for myself. let me be surprised at my failure, or my success. don't give it away beforehand.

 

2/10. would not bang.

[Raizo]

You mean you wouldn't do those quests for XP? Or cash? In ME2, did you return the locket from Miranda's LM, the smuggling evidence from Samara's RM, etc. and so forth? Or are you saying that EMS makes such quests feel mandatory rather than optional?

Yes I would because I have a slight touch of OCD so I enjoy getting loot and exp in RPGs and there is also a certain amount of satisfaction to be obtained for tieing up as many loose ends as possible. The problem with ME3's fetch quests is the execution, in ME1 or ME2 ( or any other rpg ) you'd walk up to someone, engage them in a conversation, they'd introduce themselves, they'd ask for a favour and then provide a bit of background information explaining why they want to you retrieve 'x' item or do 'y' task and why x/y is so important to them. After completing this task they thank you and you walk away with a certain satisfaction of helping someone.

In ME3 Shepard very rarely ever engages an npc in a conversation. Instead he/she overhears someone having a conversation and that person says they are looking for 'x' item. More often than not 'x' item is found during planet scanning ( which in itself is very anti climatic ), Shepard brings item back to the npc and gets thanked even though Shepard wasn't even asked yo find 'x' item in the first place. What ME3 has done is that it has removed that personal element between me and the quest giver since there is no real interaction between me and them. I'm not finding a quest item to help a person, the only reason why I'm doing it is for the reward which in ME's case is war asset.

Edit: it occurs to me that these fetch quests evolved to solve two problems for Bio. In traditional RPG designs you give out loot rewards as a reward for map exploration, but ME2 and ME3 are fairly limited in how much different loot they can give out. (Not as much of a factor for DA2, though.) And Bio hubs never have as much dialogue as people like, so the fetch quests give background chatter and a bit of interactivity. I don't think the devs appreciated that while it's all one big bag of content to them, players will compare something called a "mission" to other "missions," and something that doesn't have much content to it is going to come up looking cheap. We see a similar psychological effect with the one-liners from squadmates on the Normandy.

By the sounds of this paragraph I think you get it. I think you see and understand be the problem. In terms of quantity and quality of dialogue written the side quests in ME2 and ME3 are more or less the same, in both games these quests are fairly easy and strait forward to complete and the resolution ends more or less the same since you just get exp or money as a reward BUT the psychological effect it has on the gamer it has on the gamer is very different since Bioware removed that personal involvement of having to walk up to a character and engage them in a one on one conversation, he no longer gets to know that person personally or has a personal stake in what that person wants and as such these quests are no longer about the people but instead the artefact that needs to be retrieved. ME3 removes the humanity and personal connections from the equation and it is instead more concerned with the mechanics of its gameplay.

[KroganSoul]

I really liked it, too bad it was tied to the MP that nobody played when i played it 1.5y after release but I liked the system.

[katamuro]

I think it was a nice idea that was not used to its full potential. It could have been so much more but instead all it did is change a few numbers here and there. I enjoyed the aspect of assembling the army for the endgame but it just felt useless in the end.

[Vortex13]

The EMS/War Asset system was (and is still) a cool concept, but its implementation in ME 3 was horrible. Instead of seeing all of these various allies and assets come together, all of the players' major decisions are reduced to random numbers that are then placed into a nebulous collection that has no real baring on anything.

 

Also the balancing of the various items in the EMS/War Asset list was completely off the wall, as demonstrated by having (former) companion characters be worth more than a whole fleet of ships; in fact, my accumulated MP assets (gained from promoting my MP characters) was worth more than all of the other SP assets combined.  

 

My biggest complaint about the EMS system; as it is implemented in ME 3; is that the game tells us how we have all of these forces to bring to the fight against the Reapers, but it never actually shows them. I made a post going along with this train of thought about the Agents system of DA:I which I will put in spoiler tags below. Granted that it is slightly off topic, but it does cover (in greater detail) about how I feel about the EMS/War Asset systems in general.

 

Spoiler

 

 

I really, really hope that the agents system is not just a secondary currency for the player; an abstract 'not-gold' resource that that the player uses to buy things for the Inquisition. While player agency on how one choses to spend their agents would be miles better then the nebulous cloud that all the ME 3 war assets got thrown into, it still would be disappointing to have the game tell players how they have all of this manpower, and specialized troops but never showed us these things in-game.

 

Oh sure, you could see the the results of spending 50 agents on building a colossal statue, but if all the mechanic entails is a simple transaction; spend your agents and then a task magically gets finished; then (IMO) it would be just like ME 3's war assets. In that game, if you had enough war assets you magically got better endings, but there was not correlation between your Shepard's accumulated allies, and the endings you received. It didn't matter if you got both the Geth and the Quarians aid, or if you saved the Destiny Ascension, because none of your assets ever showed up in the game world (aside from a five second cutscene). 

 

I don't want to see that for DA:I. I don't want to complete a quest for the dwarves (let's say) and be given a reward of a squad of Legion of the Dead soldiers, or a handful of Golems, and then go and station those agents at one of my keeps, but then never see them actually show up at the keep in question, or (God forbid) for only run-of-the-mill human NPC guards to be just standing there. If I assign Qunari mercenaries to patrol the area surrounding my holdings, I want them to actually show up in the game world. Let us see the various allies that we recruit into our Inquisition as agents. Don't just tell us how we have all of these various special troops/creatures in our army but then never show us anything apart from a random, nameless human NPC.

 

 

This is of course, why I would like to see a form of an 'Import' feature for our MP characters; ideally as a cosmetic only 'model swap' with a vanilla agent. Give us an (optional) ability to customize the forces under our command, let us put a face and a name with our otherwise nameless and faceless agents. If I can have my female Dwarven Rogue that I created and imported from MP show up in my male Qunari Mage's SP game, it would not only give me an added layer of immersion; as these two characters exist in the same world; but it would also make me more attached to my troops, if I had made them all and I could very well be sending my Dwarven Rogue to her death on a particular mission.

 

[Dubozz]

^ this. Good concept, awful execution.

[Nitrocuban]

Yeah, the idea was good, but they should have showed us our war assets in action on Priority Earth. Ingame, not just some lame cut scenes.

Volus Bombers taking out enemies, Geth, Rachni and Quarians fighting on our side, a couple Krogans headbutting Reapers to death. Biotic strippers protecting us with bubbles from incoming fire, a Salarian STG team helping us take down that AA guns.

 

Would've been epic if ME3 was a scaled up suicide mission not selecting individual squad mates but our allies to do stuff.

"Who should hold back the Collectors and who shoul try to hack the gun turrets?"

[AlanC9]

The problem with ME3's fetch quests is the execution, in ME1 or ME2 ( or any other rpg ) you'd walk up to someone, engage them in a conversation, they'd introduce themselves, they'd ask for a favour and then provide a bit of background information explaining why they want to you retrieve 'x' item or do 'y' task and why x/y is so important to them. After completing this task they thank you and you walk away with a certain satisfaction of helping someone.

That's an overstatement, of course. ME2 has fetch quests that are identical to ME3's. Not very many, but that has more to do with ME3 having a single hub. You wouldn't want to attach a fetch quest to, for instance, Jacob and Jack's LMs because there's no local hub. Same thing for attaching them to the planet scanning; there'd be no guarantee you'd ever be heading to where the object would be needed. DA2 has such quests too. Again, single hub.
 

In ME3 Shepard very rarely ever engages an npc in a conversation. Instead he/she overhears someone having a conversation and that person says they are looking for 'x' item. More often than not 'x' item is found during planet scanning ( which in itself is very anti climatic ), Shepard brings item back to the npc and gets thanked even though Shepard wasn't even asked yo find 'x' item in the first place. What ME3 has done is that it has removed that personal element between me and the quest giver since there is no real interaction between me and them. I'm not finding a quest item to help a person, the only reason why I'm doing it is for the reward which in ME's case is war asset.

I don't get the italed. Why shouldn't Shepard be thanked for doing something that the person didn't ask for? Shepard's still helping the person just as much.
 
I don't see how the bolded necessarily follows from what precedes it. Assuming I've had Shepard  around the Citadel and heard the ambient convos, she's aware of the person and his problem. Shepard doesn't have a relationship with the person, but that doesn't mean Shepard can't do something in order to help that person.
 

By the sounds of this paragraph I think you get it. I think you see and understand be the problem.

Only in a theoretical sense. I'm not personally subject to the psychological effect I mentioned. I've seen it happen to others, though.
 
Anyway, none of this has anything to do with EMS.

[Catastrophy]

Pointless it is. Especially with all the MP promotions I did.

[Daniel_N7]

First, the Galactic Readiness rating, dependent of Multiplayer, was a horrible idea. It was even more horrible when the game was launched because you couldn't reach the highest level necessary to reach the "full ending" (destroy with breath scene).

 

This was fixed with the Extended Cut and the DLC's, which grant you enough EMS points to achieve this ending and even ignore the fetch quests. That was a good thing.

 

Now, regarding the EMS/War Asset System itself. I don't think it was a "bad" idea, and maybe it fitted the concept of ME3 where you are basically trying to gather forces for that final assault. But I very much disliked the explicitness of the numbers. Every mission translates into points, and that for me felt horribly "videogamey", really.

 

Mass Effect 2, I suppose, had a similar system. By completing missions, gaining your crew members loyalty and such, you probably gathered a combination of points as well, that were determinant to how the Suicide Mission played out. But the fact that those points were hidden from you made it feel more organic, more real: you know you're ready, you've made all the missions you could possibly find, but still in the back of your mind there was that doubt because those numbers weren't there for you to see so, as you jumped into the final mission, there was always that bit of tension in the air.

 

In conclusion, the EMS/War Asset system isn't the problem, but it would benefit from hiding the numbers from the player.

[Seboist]

War asset system was horrible. Just a bunch of arbitrary numbers with no tangible impact on gameplay and ceased to matter once you reached conditions for all RGB endings.

[Dabrikishaw]

I don't have a problem with how the War Asset mechanic works.

[ZipZap2000]

Great idea that didn't work when you put it into practice. Having it tied in to the multiplayer on an RPG was a terrible bad idea, SP N7 missions would have been the better option. Had they actually shown your war assets in action outside of the fleets themselves we might not even be having this discussion, I expected to see Geth, Elcor, Vorcha, backed up by the Volus bomber fleet.

[corporal doody]

when i first heard of the ems system....i was certain it meant....promote your character and i would see it in the single player....i didnt expect it to be in the form of a number only.

[DisturbedJim83]

Simply put absolute Worst idea ever making it so you had to play MP to get enough War Assets to get the only decent ending" Shepard's breath" was disgraceful at best totally put me off buying the game altogether.......until today Where its on sale on Origin for £2.99 which is about all its worth tbh as I have no intention of playing the dull MP horde mode that should not even be there in the first place if I want to be that bored Ill watch some paint dry or go to a cricket match.