283 réponses à ce sujet

[Beerfish]

The distinction isn't arbitrary at all.

 

It's all nice and dandy if you care more about your favourite class than about the lore.

 

However, things should make sense within the frame of the game's logic.

 

Actual teleportation makes no sense within the game's logic, while a biotic charge is merely a primitive version of how ships jump to FTL.

(not that a biotic charge is faster than light of course)

Says who?  Really the response is as simple as that.  This is Sci Fi and you can justify almost anything you wish within a very short time frame. 'Game Logic' in a sci fi world totally created and arbitrarily changed by the people who write it is as flexible as you can get.

 

"Cran Deebo the rich Volus industrialist found a way to in effect have an instantaneous biotic charge, in essence having the biotic start in one spot and end in another without being detected along the path."  If BioWare says it problem solved.

[Killroy]

The BioWare fan's wet dream...

[Malanek]

The simple fact is that melee was a fun alternative to combat that added significant value and variety to the gameplay. For that reason it should return. It was semi-justified in lore, the weapons are imbued with biotic or technological effects to be more effective. And by lore shields can stop bullets because of their velocity but not melee weapons. We already had situations where you could unload hundreds of bullets into a human enemy without the said enemy being killed. Combat with guns was never a realistic life simulation nor is it in any other shooter I have played.

 

It's not like the melee weapons are deflecting bullets like lightsabers. You have to defend yourself to get close to use them. People say the Shadows sword shouldn't do as much damage as a shotgun but for reasons of balance and to actually make the combat method at all useful it needed to do more damage than some weapons. You should note that the Melee Shadow was an extremely low DPS build and actually probably worked better using the better guns. But it was still a really fun kit to play.

 

There was something immensely satisfying about seeing a cerberus head explode to the bat-punch, an abomination go flying from a drell punch, or a ravager dissolving under the krolords hammer. At the end of me1 I would have been arguing the other other way, sheps overpowered elbow of doom felt really lame. But the melee in ME3 MPer was a great and fun addition.

[Former_Fiend]

As for the Shadow & Slayer's sword, it's not like we're taking out a museum piece. It's a purpose built blade with a monomolecular edge, charged with an electrical energy field. It's a futuristic sword built with futuristic technology to be used in futuristic combat. 

 

Is it realistic? Probably not. Not much of the technology in Mass Effect is, given that the entire basis of it relies on a fictional element that plays merry hell with the laws of physics and gives people the power of telekinesis.

 

Wherever we draw the line here is entirely arbitrary; Mass Effect has never been a particularly realistic setting, it just started off by presenting itself in a more serious way to where you were able to accept the unrealistic elements of it. 

 

It all comes down to personal tastes. For my money, including these elements adds a level of enjoyment and doesn't damage my immersion, so I support their inclusion. It gives me a way to develop and customize my character beyond "Guy who shoots things" "Guy who cloaks and shoots things" "Guy who summons a holographic drone to shoot things" and "Guy who lifts people with the power of his mind to make them easier to shoot."

[Mdizzletr0n]

These last two posters get it.

[Fidite Nemini]

Vanguard with Biotic Charge, Nova, Lash and Annihilation Field.

 

 

Instant preorder, principles can go die in a biotic explosion.

[EpicNewb]

This piece of concept art has me saying the omni-tool will have more features this time.  I hope they implement additional combat features beyond the blade.  Like a phase disruptor from your tool or a generated shield.

 

[Laughing_Man]

Says who?  Really the response is as simple as that.  This is Sci Fi and you can justify almost anything you wish within a very short time frame. 'Game Logic' in a sci fi world totally created and arbitrarily changed by the people who write it is as flexible as you can get.

 

"Cran Deebo the rich Volus industrialist found a way to in effect have an instantaneous biotic charge, in essence having the biotic start in one spot and end in another without being detected along the path."  If BioWare says it problem solved.

 

*sigh*

 

You fail to understand one thing, if you want to write a good story, you need to take the little things into account.

Yes, Cran Deebo can invent something (N7 Shadow is not even a biotic by the way), but then you are going to have to account for

Deebo's invention when telling the story.

 

After all, if the alliance had instant teleportation, why didn't they use it during battle X on planet Z? etc.

 

The problem is that by going with the "rule of cool" approach without even trying to account for things in the lore, the story becomes shallow

and cheap, not to mention full of holes.

 

Even as it is the ME story is not a glowing example of good story telling, but it's still more coherent than other lower forms of writing entertainment

that simply let rule-of-cool be the answer to everything.

[wass12]

For those who think that melee should be kept "realistic:" your basic pistol whip / gun butt light melee deals 150 damage. That's higher than the damage of any automatic, most semiautomatic, or any single shotgun pellet (except for the Claymore). That's right, using you Harrier as a club deals more damage than using it as a railgun. "Realistic melee damage" is a ship that sailed away a long time ago.

(Also, the N7 Shadow's base melee damage is 250/700 - only 100 points more than the standard 150/600 of the normal human infiltrator. The extremely high damage comes from the separate 600 damage of Shadow Strike circumventing the the shield gate, and the inexplicable damage bonus of Cloak - these latter two are hardly specific to melee.)

Lore-wise, Mass Effect has monomolecular blades, gene mods and powered armor augmenting the user's movement capabilities - between those, it's not that much of logic leap the a blade can penetrate body armor.

 

 

Cerberus Shade armor is worn by Phantoms who need to be prepared for a wide variety of threats. Its capacitors give modest boosts to shields and shield regeneration time. Many small improvements increase the performance of biotic amps and omni-tools, heat management and kinetic coils for ranged weapons, and synthetic muscle assistors for melee capability.

[Laughing_Man]

For those who think that melee should be kept "realistic:" your basic pistol whip / gun butt light melee deals 150 damage. That's higher than the damage of any automatic, most semiautomatic, or any single shotgun pellet (except for the Claymore). That's right, using you Harrier as a club deals more damage than using it as a railgun. "Realistic melee damage" is a ship that sailed away a long time ago.

 

By all means, regular melee should be something to throw back attackers, not cause any significant damage.

[wass12]

By all means, regular melee should be something to throw back attackers, not cause any significant damage.

If by "regular" you mean "light, " then I agree with you, some classes' melee is crippled by long animations. But this is not the problem we are talking about, and doesn't exclude the possibility of a specialist class that can deal significant damage through melee. After all, why shouldn't it be able to?

[Quarian Master Race]

As for the Shadow & Slayer's sword, it's not like we're taking out a museum piece. It's a purpose built blade with a monomolecular edge, charged with an electrical energy field. It's a futuristic sword built with futuristic technology to be used in futuristic combat. 

 

Is it realistic? Probably not. Not much of the technology in Mass Effect is, given that the entire basis of it relies on a fictional element that plays merry hell with the laws of physics and gives people the power of telekinesis.

It may as well be a museum piece, because it is scientifically and mathematically no more effective than one. "Monomolecular" is technobabble gibberish. Edge sharpness has practically nothing to do with how well a blade cuts. Blade geometry is far more important, and if it offers too much drag to the cutting medium (in this case highly advanced ceramic plate armor) it isn't going to cut it without tremendous amounts of force be it the sharpest or dullest edge in the universe. 

ME blades are made of metal that is clearly visible to the naked eye, thus would have comparable geometry to what we are capable of (and have been producing for thousands of years) constructing . Even if the edge is "monomolecular", all that is doing is driving up the profile taper from edge to flat to a ridiculously unnecessary angle. The amount of force needed is going to be defined by the flat, not by the edge, because the whole blade has to pass through the material.

The other important factor than edge geometry is kinetic energy. Since we've already established that ME blades are comparable to modern or antiquated ones in edge geometry, this is going to be the same for any normal blade. A human being is capable of generating anywhere from 60 to 130J of energy in a typical swinging motion with a sword.

Now, lets say that you want to make a 12 in/30cm cut on someone wearing body armour (a sufficient amount needed to cause major internal injuries with a slashing motion from the shoulder). I won't rerun the calculus (because the video I posted already did), but in order to get through a carbon free wrought iron (i.e. 15th century technology) breastplate, you would need approximately 21,000J  of energy (In other words, 160 times what even the stoutest human is capable of). That's, the amount of striking force needed to lift a 1 metric ton (1000kg/ 2200lb) car to two meters in height. Assuming the blade's cross section can even handle the absurd levels of kinetic energy generated, ME verse cybernetics/ powered armor would have to increase the user's strength by a factor of 160x (though the rail thin little Phantoms, Kai Lame, Shadow and Slayer don't look like they are anywhere near doing a strongman competition, so in their case it would be even more).

Now keep in mind that for a modern carbon steel armour with virtually zero slag, that energy requirement would probably be about 3-4x as high. I don't even know what composites and alloys ME armors are made from, but it is presumably better than that (not that it needs to be to effortlessly defeat any sword).

Electric effects aren't going to do anything if the blade can't physically reach a conductive surface that is in contact with flesh, and since it appears that ME armors have some sort of rubberized undersuit under the nonconductive ceramic plates, it is irrelevant.
 

These last two posters get it.

What, that willful ignorance should be an excuse for including rule of cool anime style nonsense into a series that at least pretends to be science fiction? Lightsabers literally make more sense than the blades in the ME universe being remotely effective in the combat presented.

Lore-wise, Mass Effect has monomolecular blades, gene mods and powered armor augmenting the user's movement capabilities - between those, it's not that much of logic leap the a blade can penetrate body armor.

As explained it is an utterly massive "leap in logic" unless those humans suddenly have the physical strength level required to literally bench press a train locomotive. It breaks the lore. End of.

[wass12]

As explained it is an utterly massive "leap in logic" unless those humans suddenly have the physical strength level required to literally bench press a train locomotive. It breaks the lore. End of.

No, it's not lore-breaking, that would require an internal contradiction. It's just unrealistic. Then again, so are the human-looking aliens who want to have sex with you.

 

EDIT:

Your reasoning is based on the assumption that the light ceramic armors of Mass Effect are equivalent or better than current metal plate armor. Considering that the Banshee's bare hands are capable of penetrating it, this assumption may be false.

[Former_Fiend]

It may as well be a museum piece, because it is scientifically and mathematically no more effective than one. "Monomolecular" is technobabble gibberish. 
 

 

Is it really more technobabble gibberish than molecular nodes of ore in a person's brain giving them telekenisis via dark energy manipulation?

 

We've already broken the laws of physics in the name of rule of cool to give us a mage class. I see no problem in doing it to give us some melee classes.

[Laughing_Man]

Is it really more technobabble gibberish than molecular nodes of ore in a person's brain giving them telekenisis via dark energy manipulation?

 

We've already broken the laws of physics in the name of rule of cool to give us a mage class. I see no problem in doing it to give us some melee classes.

 

Yes it is.

Eezo reacts to electricity, that is a something that remains consistant through the lore.

Some organics evolved to take advantage of that, simple. No rule-of-cool required.

 

That said, I can see some other melee weapons, something more in the vain of a WH40K's Power Sword, or a Lightsaber,

being effective in close combat.

[Mdizzletr0n]

Yes it is.
Eezo reacts to electricity, that is a something that remains consistant through the lore.
Some organics evolved to take advantage of that, simple. No rule-of-cool required.

That said, I can see some other melee weapons, something more in the vain of a WH40K's Power Sword, or a Lightsaber,
being effective in close combat.

[Helios969]

Unless you are talking about Hernan Cortex the conquistador the opinion is wrong. Sword in one shot ball and powder era sure, sword in auto fire rail gun era no.

Lol. Steve Cortez.

[wass12]

Yes it is.
Eezo reacts to electricity, that is a something that remains consistant through the lore.
Some organics evolved to take advantage of that, simple. No rule-of-cool required.

 
Don't be shy, the codex gives a more detailed explanation:
 

Element zero can increase or decrease the mass of a volume of space-time when subjected to an electrical current. With a positive current, mass is increased. With a negative current, mass is decreased. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect.

 

Now this, this cornerstone of lore, this base explanation of everything based on mass effect, this is total bullsh*t. Electric current is the movement of charged particles (electrons or ions) between two places with different electric potentials, in order to equalize said potentials. Potential doesn't have a predefined zero level, so depending on your chosen frame of reference, the same process could be described as X charge flowing in this direction, or -X charge moving in the opposite one. "Positive current" could either mean the amount of current (charged particles), in which case, "negative current" makes as much sense as an object that's -1 meter wide, or refer to (positive) ions in electrolytes moved by the potential difference - which cannot be applied to solid conductors or when the system cannot be approximated by a tube filled with said electrolyte. Like the ships' mass effect core or the eezo nodes of biotics.

 

My point is, nonsensical technobabble and rule of cool was the way of things for this space opera since day one. It's pretty late to start drawing lines in the sand now.

[Former_Fiend]

Yes it is.

Eezo reacts to electricity, that is a something that remains consistant through the lore.

Some organics evolved to take advantage of that, simple. No rule-of-cool required.

 

That said, I can see some other melee weapons, something more in the vain of a WH40K's Power Sword, or a Lightsaber,

being effective in close combat.

 

Eezo doesn't exist. It is something they made up to justify giving characters magic powers and break the light barrier.

 

How does molecules of eezo reacting to electrical impulses in your brain let you move something fifty feet away? How can all asari be biotic, even if they aren't born in the eezo rich enviroment of Thessia?

 

Taking a mono-molecular blade made out of advanced materials and using advanced methods and putting it in the hands of a cyborg with joints that have been enhanced for mobility and strength may not be realistic - I'm not going to dispute any of QMR's calculations - but it isn't less realistic than that. 

 

And while it may break the laws of physics, it doesn't "break the lore" because at no point do they establish that it wouldn't work, so them going back and having it work doesn't contradict anything from a story stand point. 

 

As for going in the WH40K power sword or the Lightsaber, well first off I'd like to point out that those are two of the least realistic, softest Sci-Fi settings out there, but ignoring that, sure, we'll go with the power sword for a minute, let's take the idea of the power sword and say that giving a sword an energy field will make this concept more believable for you, personally. Alright. I'm fine with that. Honestly, given that one of the Shadow's abilities involved firing an eletrical shockwave with a slash of the sword, I had kind of assumed that was already the case. 

 

So, fine, make it explicit. 

[wass12]

And while it may break the laws of physics, it doesn't "break the lore" because at no point do they establish that it wouldn't work, so them gong back and having it work doesn't contradict anything from a story stand point. 

 

This. So much this.

[iM3GTR]

The problem I have with the Phantom swords, is how stupidly powerful they are. According to the codex, a mass accelerator weapon could fire a piece of metal the size of a paint-chip to cause as much force as a nuclear bomb. So how the actual F*** does a stick made from metal stab through armour, which is designed to withstand the huge forces that a nuclear bomb could produce. It doesn't make any sense at all.

 

I would start a rant about teleportation and insta-kills, but all those words would destroy the internet.

[wass12]

The problem I have with the Phantom swords, is how stupidly powerful they are. According to the codex, a mass accelerator weapon could fire a piece of metal the size of a paint-chip to cause as much force as a nuclear bomb. So how the actual F*** does a stick made from metal stab through armour, which is designed to withstand the huge forces that a nuclear bomb could produce. It doesn't make any sense at all.

 

That's because it's not designed to do that. it's "a sealed suit of non-porous ballistic cloth [that] provides kinetic and environmental protection, reinforced by lightweight composite ceramic plates in areas that either don't need to flex or require additional coverage, such as the chest and head." And as evidenced  by the lack of nuclear explosions on impact, the guns don't fire at the force of said explosions either. Well, except maybe the Cain.

[Laughing_Man]

 ...My point is, nonsensical technobabble and rule of cool was the way of things for this space opera since day one. It's pretty late to start drawing lines in the sand now.

 

 

Eezo doesn't exist. It is something they made up to justify giving characters magic powers and break the light barrier.

 

...

 

As for going in the WH40K power sword or the Lightsaber, well first off I'd like to point out that those are two of the least realistic, softest Sci-Fi settings out there, but ignoring that, sure, we'll go with the power sword for a minute, let's take the idea of the power sword and say that giving a sword an energy field will make this concept more believable for you, personally. Alright. I'm fine with that. Honestly, given that one of the Shadow's abilities involved firing an eletrical shockwave with a slash of the sword, I had kind of assumed that was already the case. 

 

So, fine, make it explicit. 

 

Well, it seems like I gave the wrong impression.

 

I don't honestly think that ME lore is flawless, or that the technobabble makes sense. Far from it.

 

That said, basing entire warrior classes and fighting styles around swords when railguns are available, seems like a dumb idea - despite the fact that the

lore is somewhat flimsy on other topics. (as I mentioned before, a compact combat knife for CQC seems like a sensible choice,

a katana less so - it's too big, and unwieldy in true CQC, and in medium to long range a gun would be better)

[Former_Fiend]

Well, it seems like I gave the wrong impression.

 

I don't honestly think that ME lore is flawless, or that the technobabble makes sense. Far from it.

 

That said, basing entire warrior classes and fighting styles around swords when railguns are available, seems like a dumb idea - despite the fact that the

lore is somewhat flimsy on other topics. (as I mentioned before, a compact combat knife for CQC seems like a sensible choice,

a katana less so - it's too big, and unwieldy in true CQC, and in medium to long range a gun would be better)

 

Well, I haven't been arguing in favor of the entire class being based off the sword for the main game. Ideally the way I would want it to be handled is you have the six core classes, and you take some of the concepts and abilities from the various ME3 MP classes in there along side some of the more standard powers - so for infiltrator, the Shadow abilities would be on there - and then you let the player customize a bit and grow their character with more options, kind of in a Skyrim way, but with established classes. 

 

I want to be able to play an infiltrator that is truly different from the next guy's infiltrator in more ways than which branches we picked for the last three options on the same five skill trees we have.

 

And yes, I kind of want to be able to play a melee based character. Obviously ranged combat is simply the more viable option in reality, but here's the thing - I don't play shooters. Mass Effect and GTA are it for me as far as shooters go. So to me, having an option for melee is just very appealing because that's a playstyle I like. Doesn't need to be a katana, but I'd like to be able to hit people with something other than the butt of a gun.

[Quarian Master Race]

No, it's not lore-breaking, that would require an internal contradiction. It's just unrealistic. Then again, so are the human-looking aliens who want to have sex with you.

It is an internal contradiction. The armor in the ME universe is supposedly a reasonably effective short term defense against the firearms used in said universe (otherwise no one would wear it), which produce many orders of magnitude more energy than a sword. If it can block or mitigate the multiple thousands to perhaps several hundred thousands of joules that these weapons are putting out, than a sword with its maximum 60-130J shouldn't even make a scratch.

It does, though. Therein lies the contradiction, and the sword is in fact more powerful than most if not all of said firearms. No justification is given for this apart from "monomolecular blade". The blade clearly isn't a single molecule thick across the full cross section as it is easily visible to the naked eye, so this can only refer to the edge. Edge sharpness has virtually nothing to do with cutting ability in comparison to profile. It could be a "monoatomic" or "mononucleon" or whatever other nonsense technobabble they can come up with and it still wouldn't matter, because the flat of the blade and thus edge geometry isn't getting any narrower and the energy requirements to overcome drag are thus the same.

I forgot to even mention that with how easy these blades are to break (i.e. a simple impact from Shepard's backhand or a shot from in universe firearms) they shouldn't be able to cut a wet paper bag without shattering into a million pieces, let alone hold together through the couple of dozen kilajoules of force required to get through armor.

You have no way of saying that such aliens are realistic or unrealistic, given that your sample size of planets with evolutionary histories is limited to 1. There are even theories such as convergent evolution that presuppose that the process is rather more limited than one would think. I'd reasonably say that given the sheer size of the universe, your assertion has a non zero probablity of being incorrect, and is therefore more likely than that of a human being able to swing a sword with several thousand joules of force.. It is literally impossible. Your muscles can't generate even a fraction of that, and your bones can't come close to coping with such forces. Further there is no existing metal with the tensile strength necessary to hold itself together even if you could.

 

EDIT:

Your reasoning is based on the assumption that the light ceramic armors of Mass Effect are equivalent or better than current metal plate armor. Considering that the Banshee's bare hands are capable of penetrating it, this assumption may be false.

There is no "current metal plate armour" because ceramics have been proven superior in every conceivable way, being both lighter and more dense, thus stronger. The numbers I ran were for totally not "current" wrought iron, which is a fairly weak, brittle metal from the middle ages. If a sword has no hope of even coming close to defeating that (and it doesn't), than its effects on the former would be utterly laughable.

Would you like me to run the numbers as to what that armor in its modern form can stop? Let's start with a simple type II Kevlar vest (no ceramic plates), which is rated to stop modern handgun rounds such as the 9mm (600-700J), .45 ACP (700-850J) and even .357 Magnum revolver (1000-1100J). You'll note all these numbers are many times higher than the sword, and they are being exerted over a smaller surface area as well.

When you start getting into hard armors such as used by any modern military force or even police special units, it gets even more absurd to think about. Type III with its conditioned ceramic plates can stop a 7.62mm NATO rifle round (3,000-3,500J). Type IV (Such as the US military's MTV armor) with its ESAPI plates of boron carbide and backed by Spectra (a type of ballistic polyethylene that is 40% stronger than Kevlar) will stop .30-06 or 7.62x54R specialized armor piercing rounds (4000+J). Furthermore a sword, due to its much greater surface area that is impacting the plate or vest than a bullet, would need to generate several times those amounts of energy to defeat those armors. Keep in mind it was 21,000J for the wrought iron, and you start to see just how absurd the notion is that these swords are anything more than hilariously cumbersome paperweights.

Assuming that armor technology hasn't somehow regressed, ME ceramic armor should be at least as capable as the modern version. However, there are indications that ME universe firearms produce far, far more energy than modern ones do, meaning that the armor is similarly orders of magnitude more effective in order to reliably stop them. 
 

Is it really more technobabble gibberish than molecular nodes of ore in a person's brain giving them telekenisis via dark energy manipulation?

 

We've already broken the laws of physics in the name of rule of cool to give us a mage class. I see no problem in doing it to give us some melee classes.

Given the choice I would remove pure magic like biotics from the setting as well, but that battle is probably not worth fighting given that they have been central from the start. Besides, at least with telekinesis I can actually see some potential utility. That doesn't exist with a sword, which are inferior to firearms in every way.

Idiotic Metal Gear mall ninja crap only started showing up in the latest installment, though. No need to keep it around. If you want to play with swords, Bioware makes a game for that IIRC. "Variety" is a silly argument that would equally justify putting sniper railguns in Dragon Age. The game is a science fiction TPS. There's no need to have an extensive melee system at all, let alone dedicated weapons that make no logical sense in universe given the type of combat and other technologies utilized.

Nonsense is not a justification for more nonsense. If anything, it is the opposite in science fiction. You invent a few contrivances (i.e eezo and its effects, including FTL travel) and you go from there. You don't continually add yet more obvious contrivances that contradict previously established lore just because "cool" unless you want to simply make a space fantasy.