1428 réponses à ce sujet

[Hizoka003]

no-one??

[Xivai]

I think a 32 page debate and rage fest decidedly show a hell of a lot of people disagree with the concept that biotics are "balanced". Keep it up people, who knows Bioware may have to take a look again. They appeased the god damn Tali fans.

[tonnactus]

MBirkhofer wrote...

In 1.  Warp was complete garbage.

Then you obviously never played on the highest difficulty on Mass Effect 1.Or didnt understand that warp nearly neutralize immunity there.
Warp was the best bonus talent a soldier could have on a insanity playthrough.Also always worth to max it for vanguards and adepts.

[MBirkhofer]

_KTA_ wrote...

I think this thread means to say Biotics are not ridiculously overpowered like ME1... I think this game is balanced much better. I found myself depending on biotics & overloads often.

The problem is a big change in playstyle.  The class plays differantly.
And lets be clear.

Throwing people around like rag dolls in ME1 was WAY more fun then warp spam.     Even though warping with some english on it, is fairly fun.
Thats the prime reason to actauly use shockwave.  there isn't really a real gameplay reason where its powerful to use it.  Its just fun to play bowling with weak enemies from time to time.


Throw should work on targets depending on rank.
rank1-reds.
rank2- reds, blue, purp.
rank 3- reds, blue, purple, and humaniod yellow
rank 4- heavythrow- everything, but special bosses.    Including preatorians, scions.

Way more fun.

[MBirkhofer]

tonnactus wrote...

MBirkhofer wrote...

In 1.  Warp was complete garbage.

Then you obviously never played on the highest difficulty on Mass Effect 1.Or didnt understand that warp nearly neutralize immunity there.
Warp was the best bonus talent a soldier could have on a insanity playthrough.Also always worth to max it for vanguards and adepts.

You can't be serious.
Worst case, swap ammo once in a while.

[daguest]

First, i want to say i don't play on nightmare/insanity, only on normal. So i will not complain on the use of skills on a shielded ennemy, even if i think this is garbage.
Second i want to say i enjoyed playing ME2, as an awesome action game. So this isn't trash, smack, or whatever, it's just what i think is the biggest flaw of the game.

on ME1 i played adept to have a pure skill based class, on the contrary of my first char, a soldier, pure weapon based. The vanguard is supposed to be between soldier and adept, using biotic for CC/protection, and guns to kill everything left.
Of course, adept was OP. I agree. And warp was useless. Couldn't agree more. But it needed more balance, not a total change of mind.
On ME2, soldier was a piece of cake. No skills, lot of weapons, nuked everything with my assault rifle.
Vanguard ? well it's just borderlands, use a weapon ammo, and charge. What else do you need, since charge have a low cooldown, and everything else reload, or you are already dead.
Infiltrator ? Haha, i though "it's like the girl in borderlands, you cloak, rush, and kill them with your SMG"
Adept ? 5-6 skills, 1 skill to spam : warp. It's tactical combat. It's like playing an mmo with a shared cooldown.

The gameplay remind me too much borderlands. Even if borderlands was a cool game, there was no need to change the gameplay to copy it.

On ME3 i hope you doesn't planned to copy common MMO, and add autoattack while we choose our skills.

Modifié par daguest, 01 février 2010 - 06:49 .

[Hoffburger]

MBirkhofer wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

MBirkhofer wrote...

In 1.  Warp was complete garbage.

Then you obviously never played on the highest difficulty on Mass Effect 1.Or didnt understand that warp nearly neutralize immunity there.
Warp was the best bonus talent a soldier could have on a insanity playthrough.Also always worth to max it for vanguards and adepts.

You can't be serious.
Worst case, swap ammo once in a while.

kappukiino wrote...

Hoffburger wrote...

Seriously,
you can only use them on enemies once they have no armor or shields?
All enemies die very quickly once you remove their armor and shields,
the time it takes a biotic power to get there you could just shoot them
once or twice more.

I expected biotics to be fun this time
around, not even needing to use weapons and such, especially after the
trailers. I mean I could understand not being able to pull+throw to
instakill a boss or large mech, but every single enemy in the game? Oh
well, time to reroll soldier/infiltrator, seems like they intended
everyone to use ammo and tech powers only.

Are you
serious? Useless?

Im a vanguard and i always have someone else
with biotic and one or two with some tech talents with me and i assure
you, biotics do most of the work in disabling and killing the enemies.

You
being able to lift a fully armored and shielded person up in the air
would be biotics overpowered, u could basicly spam biotics and shoot him
and he'd be helpless...

Imo it makes sense that shields somehow
absorb some of the biotics, if this wasnt the case, they'd be far too
overpowered.

But imo biotics are far better than in ME1 and
theyre absolutely great in many ways


And to the guy above me,
i love to mess with them like that, lift them up, burn and send them
flying with throw, its epic.

_KTA_ wrote...

I think this thread means to say Biotics
are not ridiculously overpowered like ME1... I think this game is
balanced much better. I found myself depending on biotics &
overloads often.

eighteesix wrote...

my sentinel is a lot of fun, keeps the
game challenging when finding an enemy with a shield/armor/barrier.
biotics are not worthless. they are fun.

I didn't know mental disabilities were this prevalent in today's society.

[Darth_Shizz]

Hoffburger wrote...

I didn't know mental disabilities were this prevalent in today's society.

As are social disabilities...evidently 

[Colinissile]

I play on insanity and I never blame my dying or anything on the classes inabilities....I think between singularity, warp, and my barrier bonus, its up with the top. You should suck, bye!

[Hoffburger]

Darth_Shizz wrote...

Hoffburger wrote...

I didn't know mental disabilities were this prevalent in today's society.

As are social disabilities...evidently 

No need to tell white lies about a stranger's intelligence on the internet. It's not like they are a co-worker or classmate.

[Darth_Shizz]

Hoffburger wrote...

No need to tell white lies about a stranger's intelligence on the internet. It's not like they are a co-worker or classmate.

I'd usually agree. However, responding to a handful of (in fairness, not all well argued) opinions which differ to your own by insulting mental capacity is just a bit too...tactless.

[Hoffburger]

Darth_Shizz wrote...

Hoffburger wrote...

No need to tell white lies about a stranger's intelligence on the internet. It's not like they are a co-worker or classmate.

I'd usually agree. However, responding to a handful of (in fairness, not all well argued) opinions which differ to your own by insulting mental capacity is just a bit too...tactless.

I don't know if you've been around the whole time this topic has been discussed but the down syndrome kids are really starting to get annoying. It's not like if I politely tell them that they are retarded that they will miraculously realize what they are doing and change.

If you can't take the time to read and comprehend the first post in a thread, you shouldn't even be using the internet.

[Akimb0]

Hoffburger wrote...

Seriously, you can only use them on enemies once they have no armor or shields? All enemies die very quickly once you remove their armor and shields, the time it takes a biotic power to get there you could just shoot them once or twice more.

I expected biotics to be fun this time around, not even needing to use weapons and such, especially after the trailers. I mean I could understand not being able to pull+throw to instakill a boss or large mech, but every single enemy in the game? Oh well, time to reroll soldier/infiltrator, seems like they intended everyone to use ammo and tech powers only.

Welcome to the suck that is ME2 combat. I'm tired of typing the same reasons for that opinion in every thread, so you'll have to excuse me leaving it at that; but know you are not alone.

p.s. Just roll a soldier. Infiltrator only has Incinerate. Not much to write home about.

[Darth_Shizz]

Hoffburger wrote...

I don't know if you've been around the whole time this topic has been discussed but the down syndrome kids are really starting to get annoying. It's not like if I politely tell them that they are retarded that they will miraculously realize what they are doing and change.

If you can't take the time to read and comprehend the first post in a thread, you shouldn't even be using the internet.

and no, I haven't really been following it...I've only actually read a handful of posts and posted a couple of times myself. Guess I'll have to take your word that no compelling arguments have been put forwards ;p

[sanjo32]

vhatever wrote...

Slam on insanity? Wtf?

Garbage.You don't play on insanity.

Warp useless?

Roflcakes.

Troll detected.

Yup  slam crippled enemies so I could shoot them while they layed or just punch them or deal with others. You really should think before you talk about someone. Why the hell am I a troll? your a troll:?? warp was useless for me since I had to invest points into throw which is no good unless combined with slam to take them off some maps

[Farsidedown]

didn't really feel like reading through all 32 pages...I got through about 4 of them (lol), but I do think biotic attacks like pull should be able to work on lesser enemies (not heavy mechs or bosses) that only have armor remaining up, while shields and barriers would still give them resistances.



Of course this is from the perspective of somebody playing on veteran as a soldier, just because I have a biotic on my team and his lift ability almost never successfully works on most of the enemies until they're almost dead anyways. That said, I don't think it's game breaking in any way, and I still look forward to playing a vanguard on my next playthrough.

[BanditGR]

MGIII wrote...

BanditGR wrote...

kappukiino wrote...

Hoffburger wrote...

Seriously, you can only use them on enemies once they have no armor or shields? All enemies die very quickly once you remove their armor and shields, the time it takes a biotic power to get there you could just shoot them once or twice more.

I expected biotics to be fun this time around, not even needing to use weapons and such, especially after the trailers. I mean I could understand not being able to pull+throw to instakill a boss or large mech, but every single enemy in the game? Oh well, time to reroll soldier/infiltrator, seems like they intended everyone to use ammo and tech powers only.

Are you serious? Useless?

Im a vanguard and i always have someone else with biotic and one or two with some tech talents with me and i assure you, biotics do most of the work in disabling and killing the enemies.

You being able to lift a fully armored and shielded person up in the air would be biotics overpowered, u could basicly spam biotics and shoot him and he'd be helpless...

Imo it makes sense that shields somehow absorb some of the biotics, if this wasnt the case, they'd be far too overpowered.

But imo biotics are far better than in ME1 and theyre absolutely great in many ways


And to the guy above me, i love to mess with them like that, lift them up, burn and send them flying with throw, its epic.

Painfully obvious that so many people either don't play on anything higher than Veteran (especially insanity), or have somehow convinced themselves that being a Warp/Reave bot (with a tiny flavor of singularity here and there) is what biotics is all about.

If all you're doing on Insanity is Warp/Reaving, you're doing it wrong.

Yes, well I also shoot them with Warp Ammo. But by all means humor me and please share with the class the "right" way of doing it (as an Adept that is), considering that most of your enemies are shielded/armored. Responses involving a fixed party with members tailored to taking down protections will be laughed upon. The whole point of the thread is that biotics (other than AP penetration abilities such as Warp and Reave that can be used at ANY time and are darn effective at that) are only effective once defenses are down and at that point you are better off putting a bullet between their eyes than wasting cooldowns and more often than not, have your squad killing them. It's a very simple concept, to be honest.

[Vena_86]

Throw was just more fun to use in ME1.

Got 10 husks about to overwhelm you? THIS...IS...SPARTA! and bam they fly away giving you and your team time to regroup.

[WInd and Rain]

Before I start, for reference sake: I've beaten the game on Insanity with my Engineer. It was NOT easy... it was pretty much as hard as I would expect Insanity to be.



To those who are posturing: "Why use biotic/tech powers when I can just one-shot headshot with a sniper rifle? Powers are useless until enemies are in the red..."



Weapons have two limitations: they have ammo... so their functionality is limited. On Insanity I ran out of ammo constantly, and this leads to the second issue with weapons:



Weapons require accurate aiming. I'm pretty good with shooters, the Headshot Achievement was one of the first achievements I earned in this game. But still, your ability to "instakill" relies solely on player hand-eye coordination and precision aiming (unless you're using a heavy weapon). With powers, all I have to do is get the cross-hairs near the enemy, and the power either finds it, or it covers the area.



To the OP, yes, weapons may be the most damage-productive tool in the game against enemies, and on paper it may seem like powers are not as relevant as desired, but in practice I've learned that you cannot solely rely on weapons in this game. You will run out of ammo, and your aim will not always be "on". Biotics and tech powers are essential in this game, not just after the enemy is in the red, but as part of the means to get them in the red.

[noru18]

Rebalance:
Reds: normal cooldown
Reds and yellow: double cooldown
Reds, yellow, blue/purple: triple cooldown
Cooldown increases according to how many layers of protections your targets have.

Modifié par noru18, 01 février 2010 - 08:54 .

[MBirkhofer]

WInd and Rain wrote...

Before I start, for reference sake: I've beaten the game on Insanity with my Engineer. It was NOT easy... it was pretty much as hard as I would expect Insanity to be.

To those who are posturing: "Why use biotic/tech powers when I can just one-shot headshot with a sniper rifle? Powers are useless until enemies are in the red..."

Weapons have two limitations: they have ammo... so their functionality is limited. On Insanity I ran out of ammo constantly, and this leads to the second issue with weapons:

Weapons require accurate aiming. I'm pretty good with shooters, the Headshot Achievement was one of the first achievements I earned in this game. But still, your ability to "instakill" relies solely on player hand-eye coordination and precision aiming (unless you're using a heavy weapon). With powers, all I have to do is get the cross-hairs near the enemy, and the power either finds it, or it covers the area.

To the OP, yes, weapons may be the most damage-productive tool in the game against enemies, and on paper it may seem like powers are not as relevant as desired, but in practice I've learned that you cannot solely rely on weapons in this game. You will run out of ammo, and your aim will not always be "on". Biotics and tech powers are essential in this game, not just after the enemy is in the red, but as part of the means to get them in the red.

But singularity and pull dont do damage.  And throw does only a little.  that doesnt really save you ammo.
No one is questioning warp is very effective.   The question is, if a target is vulnerable, why would you do anything but warp or possibly shockwave if there is 3 or more?  (Aside from just shooting them, or using other team skills)

[tonnactus]

MBirkhofer wrote...
  The question is, if a target is vulnerable, why would you do anything but warp or possibly shockwave if there is 3 or more?  (Aside from just shooting them, or using other team skills)

To get him out of cover.To get him in a better/comfortable position to shot him.As a lifesaver against charging enemies.
Enemies flying in the air are a very easy target.

[WInd and Rain]

MBirkhofer wrote...

WInd and Rain wrote...

Before I start, for reference sake: I've beaten the game on Insanity with my Engineer. It was NOT easy... it was pretty much as hard as I would expect Insanity to be.

To those who are posturing: "Why use biotic/tech powers when I can just one-shot headshot with a sniper rifle? Powers are useless until enemies are in the red..."

Weapons have two limitations: they have ammo... so their functionality is limited. On Insanity I ran out of ammo constantly, and this leads to the second issue with weapons:

Weapons require accurate aiming. I'm pretty good with shooters, the Headshot Achievement was one of the first achievements I earned in this game. But still, your ability to "instakill" relies solely on player hand-eye coordination and precision aiming (unless you're using a heavy weapon). With powers, all I have to do is get the cross-hairs near the enemy, and the power either finds it, or it covers the area.

To the OP, yes, weapons may be the most damage-productive tool in the game against enemies, and on paper it may seem like powers are not as relevant as desired, but in practice I've learned that you cannot solely rely on weapons in this game. You will run out of ammo, and your aim will not always be "on". Biotics and tech powers are essential in this game, not just after the enemy is in the red, but as part of the means to get them in the red.

But singularity and pull dont do damage.  And throw does only a little.  that doesnt really save you ammo.
No one is questioning warp is very effective.   The question is, if a target is vulnerable, why would you do anything but warp or possibly shockwave if there is 3 or more?  (Aside from just shooting them, or using other team skills)

It's a valid question, and the original post raises valid points. I just think there's something else here that people aren't factoring. I think that the limitations of biotic and tech powers pertaining to the variability of enemy defenses are correctly relative to the limitations of weapons pertaining to ammo and the player's ability to aim quickly and accurately. Biotics and techs vary based on enemy defenses, and I like
that. This creates intense tactical choices especially when combined
with terrain, weapons, ammo variants, squadmate choices, and your own
progression development.

An Adept is a Controller, not a Damager. Your powers' effectiveness are relative to the enemy's defenses, and you have cooldown to think about. Warping is your only real lethal alternative to weapons. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. Use it as much as you can, that's what it's there for. But you need to bring a Damager and someone who can take hits with you in your squad, because on Insanity each fight presents its own problems requiring creative solutions. Use armor piercing ammo. Have Grunt with you
in case the action gets close (and it will on Insanity). When Grunt has Fort maxed out, he can survive anything. For instance, when he's buried under a dozen husks, it makes life a little easier for the Adept.

I think this thread raises good issues, but ultimately I don't think it's fair to state broadly that "biotics are useless" or the "Adept is dysfunctional". I understand the premise, but I've been in too many combats in this game with too many floating variables to agree with the OP. I'm currently playing an Adept after my first playthrough and I'm finding that, just as with the Engineer, a smart combination of ammo, squadmates, powers, and weapons, combined with smart usage of the surrounding terrain (bottlenecks, explosive crates, defensible positions, etc) are what keep you alive in this game.

[Branzers]

Why people are saying warp in ME1 was useless?  On each insanity run I did, I probably used it about as much as I'm using it in ME2 as an adept...  At the very least, once on almost every enemy.  Anyway, on to the heat of the matter...

Many posters are failing to read or comprehend what the topic is about.  Anyone can brute force their way through ME2 on insanity; the argument here is that the variety and fun-factor of adept in ME1 is almost completely gone in ME2, thanks to the global cooldown and harsher restrictions on biotics.  It's one thing to say "the playstyle has changed," it's another to water it down to spamming one or two skills.

In ME1, an adept used every skill.  No matter the difficulty level, an adept had a skill for each situation.  Sure, when the difficulty rose, certain skills were relied upon much more, but I can't think of needing to spam the same thing over and over--and I'm going to do this from memory to make a point (if I forget a skill, I probably did not have much use for it):

Barrier:  Before battles, always threw this up.  Didn't help much against 1hko rockets from drones or turrets, so it wasn't completely failsafe like immunity but aided considerably to overall survival.

Warp:  This completely ate through anything's defenses and I believe stopped pesky regeneration, too.  This was basically reserved for the strongest and most dangerous enemy on the field at any given moment.  Because drones were not affected by biotics (aside from warp and stasis), this was mostly used offensively to make them die ASAP.  Any other time, it was used to make killing quicker.

Stasis:  Bastion made this extremely overpowered (being able to kill a thresher maw on foot without immunity and not to mention complete lockdown of the final boss) but I believe stasis should not be blamed for those oversights; the bosses should have had more vigorous resistances against it.  While I think stronger enemies resisted stasis to some extent, after being fully upgraded with cooldown modifications, their resistances no longer really mattered.  Adept in ME1 was lockdown.  This aided significantly to it.  Mages in Dragon Age had access to force field which did the same thing and the game was not broken (partially because you could not use it in situations where it would be OP).  Arcane Warrior, on the other hand, was OP all the time, but that's another story...

Singularity:  There's not much to say on this.  Everyone loved using it, and it was a blessing for people like me who took the shotgun because I didn't care about having to aim perfectly.  It should be noted that this did not work on everything, which brings me to...

Lift:  When other players were considering creating a character with a bonus skill, I remember arguments over what skill should be taken.  There were equal parties arguing for singularity, lift, barrier, warp, and stasis.  Throw, not so much, but I'll get to that in a moment.  Lift, I believe, was one that most people ended up agreeing to take because of it's ability to lock down almost anything otherwise resistant to singularity like colossi.  Whatever the case, lift was useful and helped crowd control with singularity and stasis working their magic somewhere else on the playing field.

Throw:  This skill was situational, but like any great situational skill, it was very dependable.  Part of the brilliance of ME1's gameplay system (even if it wasn't as visceral/polished/whatever-shooter-term-goes-here as ME2's) is that when difficulty scaled upward, biotics did much less damage--so much less damage that adept did not depend on biotics for damage any longer.  However, each skill's properties managed to keep them far from useless.  Throw did not do much damage at all on insanity.  Instead, it became the failsafe skill you would always depend on when your heavy hitters were still cooling down.  Group of charging enemies and no singularity available?  Throw 'em!  Turned around and saw something sneak up on you?  Throw it!  See a ledge and something near it?  Throw him!  Something's been lifted far too high?  Get rid of it for good!

Unity and carnage (for me) where the other two that were used frequently.  Whatever I have forgotten I officially declare a failure since I did not use it enough to remember it.  I'm pretty sure I've covered everything--that is a testament to useful skills.

On a side note, this is intimately linked to the ridiculous "thermal clip" system in ME2.  I enjoyed tweaking the attributes of my weapons--should I sacrifice heat sinking for more power?  Should I use this ammo instead of that ammo?  Even skillwise, part of the fun for me in ME1 was using carnage whenever I had the chance--it was an always-there heavy weapon attack that did not depend upon finding scattered amounts of special ammo.  Many could argue that heavy weapons are very fun in ME2, but relegated solely to bosses/difficult enemies thus sucking away some of the fun.  Those restrictions may be necessary, but at the very least, keep the thermal clip system but allow weapons to dissipate heat like in ME1, too.  Also, I have yet to finish my insanity run in ME2 (after completing it on normal once already) and have no clue if grenades still exist.  They were marginally useful in ME1 but with such little expendable ammo, you could not really rely on it or afford to go crazy with them...  Heavy weapons now fall under the same category.  Part of the fun in RPGs is having to think harder for boss battles, not just have a "kill it" button.  Sure, it's a player's choice to stockpile ammo, but giving players a "nuke it" button (literally for Cain) is just unnecessary.  At the very least, grenades in ME1 were horrible to aim and did not home in on their victims.

This notion of "having something as a last resort but not being able to use it constantly" IS adept in ME2, particularly on insanity.  And it's far worse in several ways.  Before I continue, I do feel a properly played adept in ME1 is unstoppable, as is anyone else with immunity.  Tech specialists got the short end of the stick, IMO, but this discussion is not about that.

Adepts are now at the mercy of global cooldown.  Locking down a battlefield, as any good crowd controller has learned, involves the entire battlefield.  This is not rocket science.  A battlefield implies multiple battles.  Multiple battles involve multiple lockdowns required.  Multiple lockdowns require multitasking.  Global cooldown that emphasizes the spamming of two skills over and over does not encourage multitasking, let alone even allow variation in playstyle.

If I recall correctly, BioWare's argument for global cooldown was to 1. keep the pace of battle constant and 2. be forced to think about using one skill over the other to make more strategic decisions.  On paper, these reasons are fine.  In execution, they fall flat for adept.  Sitting around to wait for all of your skills to recharge after using one of them does not help the pace of battle.  It involves waiting around unless you feel like shooting.  Since adepts are quoted to "not have to fire a single shot," there is a flaw in logic.  Either the pace of battle is disrupted or adepts must use guns regardless.  I am just poking holes in this reasoning.  And as for thinking about using one skill over the other--it's simple.  It's a choice many adepts make on insanity.  They choose to use warp and singularity over everything else.  In that regard, reason number 2 is just peachy.  Although I would argue spamming the same thing over and over is not necessarily making strategic decisions.  It's quite mindless actually.

To me it seems like global cooldown was implemented as a response to wanting to make cooldowns in general much faster to prevent waiting around.  This backfired on adept so much it's not even funny.  Like everyone else, I was so hyped to use a pull and throw combination on someone helpless but I don't have time to waste my cooldown on messing with a single enemy when I could be using that cooldown for a more effective skill.  This is a failure compared to ME1's adept.  I don't care if that's rude to say but it misses the point of adept in ME1.  Global cooldown kills multitasking.  End of story.  Adept skills were originally designed around individual skill cooldowns.  There is no way around this.  Transferring them to this new global cooldown system is unnatural.  And really, I've played many MMOs and NONE use global cooldown--it's always individual.  If someone bothers to learn more skills, they should be able to use them.  Certain skills making global cooldown quicker or slower, like warp preventing you from using other skills longer than the cooldown from pull for example, is naturally going to encourage spamming the less risky skill in most situations.  In fighting games, poking with weak attacks is much safer than using heavy, slow attacks unless there is an opening to exploit.  But we find this isn't the case in ME2.  We do not use pull instead of warp on insanity.  We spam warp.  Why?  Well, aside from thankfully having limitless ammo, something the old ME1 system would have alleviated for all classes instead of the stupid heat cartridge crap, we have another issue to deal with...

All of our biotics only work on defenseless enemies.  Only warp and singularity for some odd decision or another work on everything else, likely made by the same person who thought a dinky floating drone would not be affected by a massive gravity warping field in ME1.  Sure, the logic behind armor/barrier/shields is theoretically sound.  I love in ME2 that I need to rely on my teammates more than the god mode adept was in ME1.  But that's not the point.  What reason do I have for these flashy new skills when they are useless most of the time on insanity and even in lower difficulties--just because a skill actually CAN work most of the time in normal does not guarantee you will be using it...  I am not as experienced with ME2 as others who are complaining about the very same issues, so correct me if I'm wrong, but let's investigate ME2's adept now:

(Stasis:  To begin, this is inexplicably gone from battles in ME2.  No one asked to have bastion able to shoot through this field again, but it was a handy tool for crowd control that is now gone completely.  Did L5 implants implement the same backwards technology that weapons have now or something?)

(Barrier:  Not a part of adept's regular arsenal now, but the disturbingly efficient protection that ME2's new cover system affords makes any shielding needs laughably unnecessary now.  On another side note, whenever people ask about taking their advanced training skill, defensive ones are often ignored which is another game balance issue this new gameplay system failed to accomodate.)

Singularity:  Beginning with the crowning jewels that are class specific skills, we have singularity.  Of course, not all of these skills were created equal; we have cloaking on one end and charge on the other end.  Singularity lies somewhere in the middle, in my opinion.  This has its uses, but those uses had to be discovered through trial and error.  Attempting to do damage with this on armored targets is idiotic, but keeping them in place for a little bit is better than having it not do anything at all.  I feel like this has become more of a trap ability than the centerpiece of adept skill builds as it was in ME1.  It serves as a handy warp detonation, but when I have something trapped with this, I end up shooting 99% of the time to prevent an untimely dissipation and getting caught off-guard during cooldown.  Despite being pretty nerfed, this skill has its purpose and I have no serious qualms with it.  I would rather we have a long cooldown on this skill and have it work the manner it did in ME1 and use a revamped stasis to freeze or, at the very least, slow down armored enemies.  Having yet another skill would be a bad idea, though, considering the simplification of the skill upgrade system and lack of skill points...  Too bad, right?  Hopefully soldiers get another type of ammo to learn in ME3 so every other class can have enough points to learn an additional skill.  This is the truth as I see it now; forgive me if it seems coldhearted to say something like that.

Warp:  If one word describes adept in ME2, it would be "warp."  Sad, too.  At least it's more exciting to use this time around, right?  I'm all for having something that is an honest-to-goodness biotic "attack" that does damage.  It's more than I could say for ME1.  But...I have guns for damage and I have guns that do armor damage, too.  Actually, guns in ME2 are so much nicer that I really don't need warp to do damage at all.  What's that you say?  "But what about running out of ammo?"  Well, how about we have our heatsink cartridges that speed up weapon recharging and weapon heat cooldown like in ME1 to alleviate that?  Back to warp, why do I need to have a direct damage skill that curves around something?  I can already curve throw or pull around to bring enemies out of cover and just shoot them, can't I?  Oh, right.  They have resistances that block it.  Damn.

Pull:  This is basically lift, but unlike lift, this is now almost always useless.  Like many other people, I was looking forward to casting things off into oblivion with the advertised lift+throw combo.  But now I rarely get that chance.  It's a fancy finishing move when no other enemies are around for open sky areas that are actually somewhat uncommon in ME2.  Nothing more.  More often than not, I am busy using my precious cooldown slot for a warp.  And another warp.  And another.  And then a singularity.  And then.............................another warp.

Throw:  The only change they made to this skill was add cooldown.  Mastered throw in ME1 was a field AND strong AND reliable all the time.  It was "my trusty throw," that elementary "force push" that wasn't spectacular but something you could fall back on when the going got rough.  Sure, throw in ME2 seems to have a little more oomph, but I challenge anyone to find an adept on insanity in ME2 saying anything good about this skill.

Shockwave:  What I would like to know is, even without any resistances whatsoever, who would bother wasting their cooldown time to knock a group of defenseless enemies down momentarily while a singularity or pull would probably last longer?

(Reave/Domination/Anything else:  I won't get into discussion about these.  I honestly do not think any particular class should NEED another skill to become more functional.  This should ONLY be the cherry on top, a "bonus" and not a requirement.)

I give up.  This post won't change anything.  But tl;dr version is that I agree with complaints leveraged against the new system for adepts.  The new battle system is nice but some things just did not translate well.  I wouldn't feel so strongly about this if I didn't care about the series and wanted to see it be everything it absolutely could be.  There is no denying that ME1 and ME2 are a cut above most other games that come out.

I just feel many design decisions for ME2 threw the baby out with the bathwater, really.  Adding in a million new romances that sometimes did not make sense and still no m/m and very little f/f.  Adding in more places to visit but keeping them constrained and small (the new town areas are a joke; I have heard nothing but complaints about the sense of grandeur and mystique and scale the Citadel has lost by being limited to such a tiny mall).  Having planet scanning instead of the mako, something that could have been refined but something I thought was absolutely necessary in conveying the soul-crushing emptiness of space and to emphasize preciousness of life and the importance of Shepard's mission.  Having a strange way of handling inventory to no inventory at all.  Having overall world continuity and charm with elevators and certain quests only to be replaced by jarring loading screens and a mission complete summary.  Going from a meticulously crafted mystery filled with plot twists and a genuinely sympathetic enemy to ME2's "Dragon Age Origins in Space" storyline schematic (which is an entire discussion on its own, trust me)...  Obviously people never wanted ME2 to be ME1 or ME1.5, but there were too many changes that do not sit well with lovers of the first game.  I happen to be one of the few who consider nearly every change a detriment, but that is neither here nor there.

I hate shooters and ME1 absolutely surprised me.  Adept made it playable for me.  Every other complaint I have against ME2 is just fluff and opinion.  But I genuinely believe there is a problem with adept's conceptualization this time around.  Unless I am convinced otherwise, I feel it's absolutely necessary to at least consider the complaints being leveraged against some of ME2's gameplay choices, particularly regarding the adept since it's so close to my heart.

I don't have time to proofread this so I apologize if I'm rambling or incoherent.  

Modifié par Branzers, 01 février 2010 - 11:31 .

[Hoffburger]

WInd and Rain wrote...

MBirkhofer wrote...

WInd and Rain wrote...

Before I start, for reference sake: I've beaten the game on Insanity with my Engineer. It was NOT easy... it was pretty much as hard as I would expect Insanity to be.

To those who are posturing: "Why use biotic/tech powers when I can just one-shot headshot with a sniper rifle? Powers are useless until enemies are in the red..."

Weapons have two limitations: they have ammo... so their functionality is limited. On Insanity I ran out of ammo constantly, and this leads to the second issue with weapons:

Weapons require accurate aiming. I'm pretty good with shooters, the Headshot Achievement was one of the first achievements I earned in this game. But still, your ability to "instakill" relies solely on player hand-eye coordination and precision aiming (unless you're using a heavy weapon). With powers, all I have to do is get the cross-hairs near the enemy, and the power either finds it, or it covers the area.

To the OP, yes, weapons may be the most damage-productive tool in the game against enemies, and on paper it may seem like powers are not as relevant as desired, but in practice I've learned that you cannot solely rely on weapons in this game. You will run out of ammo, and your aim will not always be "on". Biotics and tech powers are essential in this game, not just after the enemy is in the red, but as part of the means to get them in the red.

But singularity and pull dont do damage.  And throw does only a little.  that doesnt really save you ammo.
No one is questioning warp is very effective.   The question is, if a target is vulnerable, why would you do anything but warp or possibly shockwave if there is 3 or more?  (Aside from just shooting them, or using other team skills)

It's a valid question, and the original post raises valid points. I just think there's something else here that people aren't factoring. I think that the limitations of biotic and tech powers pertaining to the variability of enemy defenses are correctly relative to the limitations of weapons pertaining to ammo and the player's ability to aim quickly and accurately. Biotics and techs vary based on enemy defenses, and I like
that. This creates intense tactical choices especially when combined
with terrain, weapons, ammo variants, squadmate choices, and your own
progression development.

An Adept is a Controller, not a Damager. Your powers' effectiveness are relative to the enemy's defenses, and you have cooldown to think about. Warping is your only real lethal alternative to weapons. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. Use it as much as you can, that's what it's there for. But you need to bring a Damager and someone who can take hits with you in your squad, because on Insanity each fight presents its own problems requiring creative solutions. Use armor piercing ammo. Have Grunt with you
in case the action gets close (and it will on Insanity). When Grunt has Fort maxed out, he can survive anything. For instance, when he's buried under a dozen husks, it makes life a little easier for the Adept.

I think this thread raises good issues, but ultimately I don't think it's fair to state broadly that "biotics are useless" or the "Adept is dysfunctional". I understand the premise, but I've been in too many combats in this game with too many floating variables to agree with the OP. I'm currently playing an Adept after my first playthrough and I'm finding that, just as with the Engineer, a smart combination of ammo, squadmates, powers, and weapons, combined with smart usage of the surrounding terrain (bottlenecks, explosive crates, defensible positions, etc) are what keep you alive in this game.

You wasted all that time typing and claiming you agree somewhat with me in my OP yet you talk as if you didn't read it at all. For the billionth time, it's not about difficulty or "keeping an adept alive," it's about fun.