57 réponses à ce sujet

[goishen]

This is not how it works.

The game gets a budget and time for SP. If someone decides to add MP, it gets its own budget, it's own time and possibly even it's own people. Adding MP does not take away from SP. If it does anything at all, it will be that the good things from MP also find their way into SP.

Intimidate was filled eventally, after sacrificing the council.

 

 

Kind'a.   The last two games developed by BioWare had development of MP along with SP if only to test out some of the features on SP deployment.  So, they kind'a go hand in hand.   Win-win.

[pdusen]

Kind'a.   The last two games developed by BioWare had development of MP along with SP if only to test out some of the features on SP deployment.  So, they kind'a go hand in hand.   Win-win.

 

No doubt, I think their point was just that the two sides are budgeted separately. The people who think that dropping MP would mean more development zots went to the SP campaign are quite mistaken.

[CptFalconPunch]

Having to put points into charm and intimidate "skills" makes no sense. You sacrifice your combat effectiveness to get the dialogue options in an RPG game. Glad they got rid of it.

Reputation system in ME3 was quite good, it served as a threshold for the options to appear and when you passed a certain number you got both options regardless of whether you were a Paragon or Renegade player before. 

 

What do you mean it makes no sense? Instead of improving combat abilities you improve your personality/dialogue abilities. They're both strengths in SP.

 

I don't know what they are going to do. Bioware are talented they have to come up with something.

I very much enjoyed when i fully invested on paragon on my second playthrough and made saren suicide. That was the best dialogue option ever.

[Vazgen]

What do you mean it makes no sense? Instead of improving combat abilities you improve your personality/dialogue abilities. They're both strengths in SP.

 

I don't know what they are going to do. Bioware are talented they have to come up with something.

I very much enjoyed when i fully invested on paragon on my second playthrough and made saren suicide. That was the best dialogue option ever.

There is no learning curve to those points. Putting points in Sniper Rifles makes at least a little sense because you actually use sniper rifles in combat. Putting points in Charm or Intimidate has no such effect. You should not be able to come out as a menacing figure just because you acted as a xenophobic a** to some random hanar on the Citadel. Furthermore, given the skill's dependence on your Paragon/Renegade level you can't intimidate Saren as a full (or not so) paragon player. That limits roleplaying options for no reason. 

Another example, Eden Prime's workers. No point in Charm/Intimidate - no way to convince them to tell you about smuggling ring. If you do put points there, where do those points come from?

IMO the more options a player has the better. ME3 does it quite well with Reputation system that limits the availability of both options. Hit enough reputation and you can choose both Paragon and Renegade options, even if you were a full Paragon or full Renegade player before. That creates more options for roleplaying characters with mixed alignment. I don't think it'll work in ME:Next, however, for a relatively unknown protagonist compared to the First Human Spectre Commander Shepard.

I'm not even talking about ME2's seriously flawed system... 

I really look forward to what they can come up with but I sincerely hope that they won't force us to 1) sacrifice combat effectiveness to get the dialogue options we want 2) pick either Paragon or Renegade option. 

[Pasquale1234]

There is no learning curve to those points. Putting points in Sniper Rifles makes at least a little sense because you actually use sniper rifles in combat.

Unless you earned those points using assault rifles. Or completing fetch or other quests. One of the problems inherent in systems that put all of the points in the same pool.

Capcom separated things out a bit in Dragon's Dogma. XP from quest completion and enemy kills go into the same pool for character level-up, but they use a separate pool of discipline points - earned only from kills - to purchase combat skills. The game also has an affinity system, where NPCs offer quests and rewards based entirely on your relationship with and dialogue choices with them individually.
 

I'm not even talking about ME2's seriously flawed system...

ME2's system has cost me a ton of time...

First playthrough: Imported an ME1 character, had plenty of blue and red options available, maintained the loyalty of all squad mates.

Second attempt: Imported the ME2 character again, had fewer red or blue options available, bailed when I discovered I would not be able to maintain both Miranda's and Jack's loyalty (I hadn't gotten to the Tali-Legion confrontation yet). And yeah, the passive skill that maximizes morality points is maxed for this character.

Third attempt: Imported the ME2 character and purposely chose most top right, paragon point awarding options. Avoided neutral options entirely, and very rarely made a renegade choice. Many play hours later, discovered that still wasn't going to be enough to keep both Miranda and Jack around.

Looked at the wiki and was reminded of the paragon / renegade point bonus available only from an ME1 character import. Clearly, ME2's system was designed and balanced around the expectation of an ME1 import. It's pretty sad when you need to metagame to this degree and rely heavily on morality points from side content to get important options in key missions.

My canon Soldier Shepard gets 141 paragon and 64 renegade points when imported to ME2. I almost feel like I should re-play her to try to maximize those point totals - just so I can get the desired options in ME2. Yes, I'm a proponent for consequences with choices, but how they award and use P/R points is pretty arbitrary.
 

I really look forward to what they can come up with but I sincerely hope that they won't force us to 1) sacrifice combat effectiveness to get the dialogue options we want 2) pick either Paragon or Renegade option.

Systems that require point investment in non-combat skills usually give more points. ME1 also required investment in decryption and electronics to enable hacking and support mako repair - plus the Spectre skill - but I never felt starved for points to invest in combat skills. ME1 also allowed you to invest every single point somewhere, whereas in ME2 I've ended up with points I can't use because I need more to purchase the next level of anything.

DAO has a system where non-combat talents are completely separate from combat skills. A point toward combat skills is awarded every level, but a new talent is only available every 3rd level (iirc). 4 levels of Coercion are available to the PC, and the game uses that to determine which dialogue options are available. If you have enough Coercion, the game offers an Intimidate option (which relies on your primary combat attribute - strength for warriors, dexterity for rogues, magic for mages) along with a Charm option (which relies on the cunning attribute). I didn't think that system was so awful, but it went away.

DA also has an approval / disapproval system with each individual follower that impacts your relationship with each of them.

ME2's mess is probably the reason they did away with neutral options in ME3. Selecting a neutral option in ME2 is a wasted opportunity to earn those P/R points you desperately need to unlock content later in the game.

[Vazgen]

@Pasquale - Agreed. At least in case of sniper rifles you have the option to simulate getting experienced with them (why a seasoned soldier is not familiar with guns right from the start is a whole another matter). There is no such thing for charm/intimidate points. Nothing indicates how the character becomes more influential with time. You get same amount of Renegade points from executing a criminal as you get from intimidating Conrad Verner. ME3 Reputation system touches that subject but I'm unsure how well it'll fit to the next Mass Effect.

 

In all three games you can fully fill almost all skill lines which is not a good thing IMO. And I absolutely despise having to unlock skills through other unrelated skills. For example, my Engineer build uses AI Hacking and Overload as only powers but I'm forced to put points in both Combat Drone and Cryo Blast in ME2. ME3 got it right by putting level locks instead. The idea is right but the speed of level gaining is very fast and the limitation is rendered obsolete halfway through Mars.

[goishen]

Second attempt: Imported the ME2 character again, had fewer red or blue options available, bailed when I discovered I would not be able to maintain both Miranda's and Jack's loyalty (I hadn't gotten to the Tali-Legion confrontation yet). And yeah, the passive skill that maximizes morality points is maxed for this character.

Third attempt: Imported the ME2 character and purposely chose most top right, paragon point awarding options. Avoided neutral options entirely, and very rarely made a renegade choice. Many play hours later, discovered that still wasn't going to be enough to keep both Miranda and Jack around.

Looked at the wiki and was reminded of the paragon / renegade point bonus available only from an ME1 character import. Clearly, ME2's system was designed and balanced around the expectation of an ME1 import. It's pretty sad when you need to metagame to this degree and rely heavily on morality points from side content to get important options in key missions.

 

 

Ehhh, I don't really wanna say you're wrong, but you're not totally correct with your assessment either. 

 

ME2 had a system where by if you had options of doing something the very first time you visited someplace but didn't then the points wouldn't count towards the running total.  In other words, if the first time you visited the citadel you only did 2/8 of the paragon responses.  That would only give you 10/40 points to the running total.  Now, this might not seem like a lot, but you start adding those up for places like Illium, they can add up extremely fast.

 

Or something like that.   I'm sure I'm screwing it all up.  However, know this.   I've had run throughs where I've gotten Jack/Miranda and Tali/Legion together.  And that was without me even playing ME1.

[Farangbaa]

ME2's system works as follows:

The game keeps track of how many points you have in a certain morality vs how many points you could have gotten. So for your very first conversation with Jaco, I think, you can choose a paragon option or a renegade one. If you pick paragon:

2 paragon points out of a possible 2 = paragon value = 2/2 = 1
Which makes your renegade score 0/2 = 0.

Intimate/charm options have some check value between 0 and 1. Lets say you get a charm intimidate option immediatly after and the check value for both is 0.5 You'd pass for charming, you'd fail for intimidating. Some checks in the game have low values for paragan and high for renegade, or the other way around. Some are both really high (but always lower than 1, I THINK). A non import character will pretty much have to take every single paragon dialogue option to pass every paragon check, and that character will pass 0 intimidate check.

Imported characters though start with a set value of paragon/renegade based on their ME1 morality. You can import a pretty high value (forgot how high exactly ) for both moralities. This gives you a lot of freedom, because it will take a while before your check values will drop below 1, they will be much higher for a long time.