Especially considering we are exploring an alien galaxy with alien techs and environments.....to see crates of thermal clips in an alien base would be the cause of a massive facepalm.
The overheating system in this environment is simply more convenient and practical.
Yeah, this is why I like the idea of mix between the two - upgradeable heat sinks that you can pick up or recycle after being spent (like an arrow).
Several reasons.
I think mostly it boils down to finding weapons I like and want to use, not because they are clearly better than other weapons, but because they fit my particular playstyle.
I also think weapon balance is important so that all weapons feel useful, or that they have a purpose in the game. And I think weapons are just as much a part of making your chosen class unique as much as the powers (and power evolutions) you use on that class.
Oh, I agree.
One of my many disappointments upon loading ME2 for the first time was the lack of stat info about the weapons. ME1 had it in abundance, and I'd like to see it return. ME3's bar graphs only compared 2 weapons at a time, and still didn't give you actual raw numbers. You didn't know, for example, the actual clip capacity until you equipped a weapon and went into battle with it. So weapon selection in ME2&3 was really trial and error.
When you mentioned balance, I thought you might be making a reference to every weapon having an identical dps over time, doing identical damage given the same number of thermal clips, or something along those lines.
For example, do you take the Widow for one-shot-one-kill, or do you take the Raptor that deals less damage but can kill two enemies (or possibly more) before you need to reload or take cover? Which sniper rifle works best with your current playstyle or power set? If you have a weapon that kill in one shot and has multiple shots per clip, why use the Widow or Raptor, and why then would the developers even bother designing the Widow and Raptor if there was clearly a better weapon in the game?
The obvious reason for lesser equipment to exist alongside vastly superior equipment is the feeling of progress players expect. As your character levels up, the available gear improves.
Variety and options are good. 
I thought Mass Effect 2 had some good (but obviously not perfect) weapon balance. They gave the weapons a role: pistols anti-armor, SMGs anti-shields, shotguns anti-shields but close range, sniper rifles anti-armor but long range, assault rifles all-around. And within each category, each weapon worked differently, but were at least somewhat balanced. I thought shotguns, pistols, and SMGs were balanced well, but assault rifles and sniper rifles had some duds.
Speaking of which - I've wondered how people feel about the homogenization of shields and barriers in ME3. Specifically, overload and disruptor ammo became effective on barriers, warp ammo was still not effective on shields.
Mass Effect 3 had a lot of weapons, but a lot of the vanilla weapons were garbage. Some of the weapon balance changes pushed the imbalances even further, and then a bunch of the DLC weapons dropped all illusion of balance. For example, no real good reason to use any SMG except the Punisher since it is clearly superior to all other SMGs... and most assault rifles for that matter.
I think we can pretty much expect that DLC gear will tend to be better than vanilla gear, for obvious reasons.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
The obvious reason for lesser equipment to exist alongside vastly superior equipment is the feeling of progress players expect. As your character levels up, the available gear improves.
Variety and options are good.
"Lesser equipment alongside vastly superior equipment". I feel that this is staple of Fantasy RPGs where all swords/staffs/whatever function pretty much the same and you upgrade them over time or buy better versions. ME1 followed this trend. It sort of works if you have buy+sell options in the game. ME1 had buy+sell options... and a ton of crap to sell.
But if you trying for weapon variety and are making an effort to have a balanced weapon set, then having tiers of weapons does not really make a whole lot of sense. In ME1, each weapon category worked exactly the same (all pistols worked the same, all shotguns worked the same, and so on) so the lesser-to-superior model worked to a degree.
But with the concerted effort in ME2 and ME3 to have more weapon variety and to try to make the weapons somewhat balanced, the old lesser-to-superior model becomes does not work anymore, particularly if you cannot get rid of the lesser weapons.
The idea of progress is an interesting one: how do you make the player feel like they are progressing?
In ME2 and ME3, enemy health+protections+damage increase with player level. Not sure about ME1.
- In ME1, players progressed by getting better loot drops and increasing their powers with XP.
- In ME2, players progressed by finding and researching upgrades that improved powers and weapons and armor. Occasionally you would find a new weapon, and got to pick a bonus weapon. You increased your powers by spending points, and could choose a power evolution when maxed.
- In ME3, players progressed by finding and purchasing mods and weapons, and mod/weapon upgrades. You increased your powers by spending points, and could choose multiple power evolutions.
Speaking of which - I've wondered how people feel about the homogenization of shields and barriers in ME3. Specifically, overload and disruptor ammo became effective on barriers, warp ammo was still not effective on shields.
I do not think that it was particularly thought out very well, although considering how few barriers you actually faced, it probably did not turn out to not be that great of a deal. Hard to say. Considering that most enemies did not have any protections, biotic classes ended up having Throw on ridiculous cooldowns with super-biotic teammates Javik and Liara priming everything for rapid detonations. Maybe the developers felt the Engineer needed a little extra help? Hard to say.
Having warp+warp ammo work on shields would have been somewhat interesting, but then you have the Sentinel with both Overload and Warp, making one of them redundant. That problem was mostly Overload suddenly working on barriers.
In ME1, Barrier was a power that essentially overlayed extra shields on top of your shields.
In ME2, they changed this with the new protection and power mechanics so Overload/Energy Drain was a hard counter to shields, Incinerate/Warp/Reave (and somewhat Inferno Grenades and Concussive Shot) was a hard counter to armor, and Warp/Reave was a hard counter to barriers. Weapons and ammo powers were soft counters to these defenses.
In ME3, they half-kept, half threw away these mechanics and I am not really sure what they were trying to do at times. Some weapons were still given modifiers, but most were not. Some powers were still given modifiers... but only the modifiers for Overload and Energy Drain really made a difference it seems; it was all about priming+detonating, and the explosions had the modifiers and a lot of the biotic powers had bonuses to detonations. So...
Yeah I don't know.
I think I saw someone mention once (or maybe it was me in fever dream) they could go to just armor+shields. You would need to tweak the classes to compensate. Overload for Shields, Incinerate for Armor, Warp for both?
I think we can pretty much expect that DLC gear will tend to be better than vanilla gear, for obvious reasons.
Unfortunate but true. Most of the time.
Funny enough, DLC armors tended to have more total stats than the other armors, but they were hardly worth using over the 'pure' mix-and-match sets.
But the DLC weapons were typically way too good -- and way too light -- compared to vanilla game weapons.
A game like ME4 will always have early game weapons that are weaker compared to later unlocked weapons.
That's as much part of the game as f**** alien chicks and saving the galaxy and stuff.
In regards to ME1's heating system and people complaining that end game weapons with frictionless materials don't overheat... um, no duh? That's called making progress through a long journey in an RPG, a genre built around making progress with your character. It's a reward for playing through the game and leveling up to a certain point. Is that really a fair argument?
In ME3 you could have a broken gun after the first couple of missions. Leveling weapons was cheap, ammo powers could increase clip sizes, and there were mods.
ME2 was the best balance in regards to ammo because weapons had lower clip sizes. Sniper rifles were OP in ME1, super OP in ME3... but in ME2 even the Widow only had 13 something shots. Also upgrades costed resources and needed to be discovered through missions, and were actually missable. If ME:N takes place way in the future I think it's easy for Bioware to bring back an ammo system that doesn't break lore. A few hundred years in the future is a larger time for the races of the galaxy to adapt than the two years between ME1-2 where every single being in the galaxy just happened to adapt.
Speaking of which - I've wondered how people feel about the homogenization of shields and barriers in ME3. Specifically, overload and disruptor ammo became effective on barriers, warp ammo was still not effective on shields.
A lot of ME3's gameplay changes from ME2 actually disappointed me, and that was one of them. As someone pointed out in ME2 each gun had a specialty, be it armor, shields, barriers, or its range. Enemies came in all varieties of classes and protection types, which meant one needed to have a balanced party to make things easier. It was kind of like action rock-paper-scissors. Allowing overload to work on shields and barriers made enemies even having barriers completely pointless. Warp and reave were completely pointless. ME3 felt even less tactical than ME1 and ME2. I think the level design also trivialized the cover system. Even playing as an infiltrator I could run out in the open and still decimate everything. Vanguards... they simply do not die...ever.
One of my many disappointments upon loading ME2 for the first time was the lack of stat info about the weapons. ME1 had it in abundance, and I'd like to see it return. ME3's bar graphs only compared 2 weapons at a time, and still didn't give you actual raw numbers. You didn't know, for example, the actual clip capacity until you equipped a weapon and went into battle with it. So weapon selection in ME2&3 was really trial and error.
Worse is that in ME3 the info bar does not depend on the actual weapon properties, but independent numbers...
I hope ME:N will use an equipment information system similar to the one used in Call of Pripyat*.
Speaking of which - I've wondered how people feel about the homogenization of shields and barriers in ME3. Specifically, overload and disruptor ammo became effective on barriers, warp ammo was still not effective on shields.
That these were suddenly supposed to be 2 differently working systems in ME2 never made sense to me, so I welcomed the 'soft' change back.
Ideally, overload/disruptor ammo should be effective against shields/barriers and warp/warp ammo against armour and health again, as in ME1. (Imo)
(I know there was no warp ammo in ME1, and there is an overlap between warp, incendiary, and armour piercing/shredder ammo -but these can be adjusted to posses distinctive pros and cons, and not fall all into the same category)
*Edit:
I was to lazy to boot up my copy of CoP, but here is a screenshot to showcase what I mean. (Rather large picture)
The game this is from is obviously modded, but the important thing is the Beretta stats window, which compares the pistol to the currently equipped (upgraded) Fort12 (?).
As can be seen on first glance, the Beretta is better in every compared way, except Magazine size.
(Light green bar parts double as the Fort's stat bar, the darker green displayed shows how much the Beretta excells in that area. If the two weapons were reversed, it would be light and dark red instead)
Not displayed is only the degradation coefficient (which I believe is higher for a base Beretta than for the Fort). Weight is displayed but not compared; the Fort12 weights about half as much as the Beretta, if i'm not mistaken.
Edit 2: Refrased some parts and added Info on the missing stat comparison.
I hope that ME:N will display all equipment information in some way, not only what the (GUI- ?) designers deem necessary.
Modifié par KrrKs, 03 mai 2015 - 07:05 .
Retour en haut
