891 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

I believe Pasquale's point is than in a real RPG a PC should't have to adapt, but should be able to keeps doing exactly what he wants and succeed anyway.

Did you actually read the post, or you just take this as an excuse to insult him?

 

Pasquale is saying that in a "real RPG" the player would have a say in how much ammo of what kind of gun you chose to bring to the mission.  If we wanted to use a sniper rifle, we could carry x amount of thermal clips for it.  And could bring in more if we so chose to (within certain limits)  Note the comparison to Baldur's Gate where the player could theoretically carry as many stacks of arrows as you have inventory space.  In ME2, you get, what ten shots with a sniper rifle, then you have to scavenge off fallen foes for spares?  What kind of soldier carries ten shots from his main weapon into a war zone?

 

The heat sink system, at least, allowed for effective infinite ammo, though it required a greater degree of fire discipline.

[Elhanan]

Really? How? It was considered the best out of the whole trilogy

ME2 has less RP than the other titles, more Player restrictions, annoying thermal clip mechanic, and more excessive use of so-called mature content.

[UpUpAway]

Looting yields unknown resources and treasure; policing the field for needed ammo is tedious. The former is a Player option; the latter is an annoying mechanic.

 

Looting crates after a battle is no less Immersion breaking than looking for ammo... the only difference is that with the latter, the player can make a conscious decision not to do it and just go forward low on ammo and make whatever other choices consciously that support that decision (using more powers, using squadmates, using melee, etc.).  That is, they know that all they'll be missing out on is ammo.  However, if you bypass opening one of the mystery crates, you might just be bypassing that critical piece of armor or mod or weapon.   The player cannot make an "informed" choice to bypass particular crates and stay in the moment because they can't know what's in the crate.  That's what makes looting more immersion breaking than picking up just ammo.

 

In addition, the act of unlocking the crate itself takes more time away from engaging with the game in the role of a "commander" and forcibly puts the player into a "role play" as a thief (playing out of character is also breaking immersion).  Then, the game forces the player right out of any role as you have to sort out your inventory, equip items, convert some to omni-gel - i.e. do basic game maintenance stuff.

 

Walking over a thermal clip on the battlefield can be done without Shepard even breaking stride.  You don't have to "police" the entire battlefield either... you just have to scan the area through your scope... they show up rather well even from a distance.  Looking for ammo is only tedious if you choose make it that way... and it's certainly no more tedious than trying to locate specific armors, weapons, or mods in ME1.

[Elhanan]

So does yours what? Adapt and overcome? If that's the case you wouldn't be worrying about running out of ammo like you say.
 
Is it because of the language?

I adapted; selected classes that did not have to depend so much on weapons. Thus, did not care as much about policing clips.

The Engn was rather surprising at how much more effective at overcoming adversity than the Adept. The Sentinel was about as capable, but so annoying due to lost Tech armor on reloads.

[Elhanan]

Looting crates after a battle is no less Immersion breaking than looking for ammo... the only difference is that with the latter, the player can make a conscious decision not to do it and just go forward low on ammo and make whatever other choices consciously that support that decision (using more powers, using squadmates, using melee, etc.).  That is, they know that all they'll be missing out on is ammo.  However, if you bypass opening one of the mystery crates, you might just be bypassing that critical piece of armor or mod or weapon.   The player cannot make an "informed" choice to bypass particular crates and stay in the moment because they can't know what's in the crate.  That's what makes looting more immersion breaking than picking up just ammo.
 
In addition, the act of unlocking the crate itself takes more time away from engaging with the game in the role of a "commander" and forcibly puts the player into a "role play" as a thief (playing out of character is also breaking immersion).  Then, the game forces the player right out of any role as you have to sort out your inventory, equip items, convert some to omni-gel - i.e. do basic game maintenance stuff.
 
Walking over a thermal clip on the battlefield can be done without Shepard even breaking stride.  You don't have to "police" the entire battlefield either... you just have to scan the area through your scope... they show up rather well even from a distance.  Looking for ammo is only tedious if you choose make it that way... and it's certainly no more tedious than trying to locate specific armors, weapons, or mods in ME1.

Yes; policing clips by walking over them with our feet is certainly immersive. Can only imagine what occurs when Shepard sits down on occasion.

The task is annoying, and being coerced into doing it is more so.

[UpUpAway]

Not even virtually; had to use proper care not to overheat a Sniper Rifle with HE rnds. It took the use of mods, ammo, and patience; something snipers are known to have. The Player had the freedom to design the rifle as they wished, and could use the rifle if they wished.

In ME2, both choices were eliminated. And when the rifle could be gained through acquiring Reaper tech, time is then spent looking for ammo, switching to inferior weaponry that use the same ammo, or explore other options.

 

You're choosing to limit the discussion to using HE rounds in a sniper rifle... ignoring the fact that without HE rounds and 2 Frictionless Materials mods in a Spectre Gear AR you can fire full on forever without overheating  (I've done it in Pinnacle Station Survival for an hour straight... causing my game to freeze up completely in the end).  In ME3, you could purchase the off-hand ammo pack to increase the carrying capacity of all your weapons.  In ME3, upgrading the level of weapon also increased it's carrying capacity and you could still increase the capacity using mods.  In ME1, you still had to loot the battlefield in order to find those better weapons and upgrades.  (So, these games still allowed the player to make choices in how they "designed" their weapons.)

 

Lining up your shots in ME2 and ME3 in order to not waste ammo also required patience... and accuracy (something snipers are also supposed to have) - 1 bullet, 1 kill - rather than just waiting a fraction of a second for the weapon to cool and just trying again and again and again.

 

BTW, weapons restrictions applying to various classes is a totally separate issue from "infinite ammo"... and I have no intention of following that straw dog in this discussion with you.

[AlanC9]

Did you actually read the post, or you just take this as an excuse to insult him?.

Just shorthanding it for the mikefest's benefit. The type of adaptation he was talking about -- using different weapons or less gunfire -- isn't what Pasquale wants to to.

[Elhanan]

You're choosing to limit the discussion to using HE rounds in a sniper rifle... ignoring the fact that without HE rounds and 2 Frictionless Materials mods in a Spectre Gear AR you can fire full on forever without overheating  (I've done it in Pinnacle Station Survival for an hour straight... causing my game to freeze up completely in the end).  In ME3, you could purchase the off-hand ammo pack to increase the carrying capacity of all your weapons.  In ME3, upgrading the level of weapon also increased it's carrying capacity and you could still increase the capacity using mods.  In ME1, you still had to loot the battlefield in order to find those better weapons and upgrades.  (So, these games still allowed the player to make choices in how they "designed" their weapons.
 
Lining up your shots in ME2 and ME3 in order to not waste ammo also required patience... and accuracy (something snipers are also supposed to have) - 1 bullet, 1 kill - rather than just waiting a fraction of a second for the weapon to cool and just trying again and again and again.

In ME1, I had to use care with my SR or overheat it, and the cadence also helped time when to pop up and take my next shot and remain behind cover. In ME3, there are multiple options to increase Ammo supplies; Player's choices. While both games offer better solutions, neither of them offered unlimited firing solutions.

And generally, I hit what I aim at; simply am stationary a lot more than many other Players. Am still allergic to Action mode on all games, even on RPG's with Pause. But in ME2, found it better to play an Engn and use abilities rather than weaponry.

[Sylvius the Mad]

How is it demonstrable when the demonstration shows the exact opposite?

Assassination has a 45s cooldown in ME1. You can't use it to compare time to kill to unbuffed rifle shots in ME2 unless you account for the massive 45s cooldown in the time to kill. ME2 Mantis can fire 20 times in that period without reload canceling.

I wasn't talking about Assassination. My example was an Engineer with a sniper rifle (something that isnt even possible in ME2 at the start of the game).

With non-assassination shots in ME1 you are overheating the rifle in a couple shots typically. Then you wait for the rifle to cool which is about 5 seconds. TTK / cycle times are clearly not that fast when you are talking about multiple targets.

The way to maximize RoF in ME1 is to pause long enough between shots that you don't overheat in the first place. By factoring in overheating you're constructing a strawman.

Also, the explanation for thermal clips is more firing in the same amount of time. This actually happens. From the codex on small arms:

The codex does not claim that damage per shot is higher, it claims that effective rate of fire is higher. This is in fact what you see in game.

I also recall seeing someone do the math to compare effective ROF of the ME1 Avenger vs ME2 Avenger back in the day. And sure enough ME2 Avenger has higher average rate of fire.

Ignoring the possibility of running out of thermal clips. While the game does, arguably, provide enough clips, that's not guaranteed to be true in every fire fight everywhere in the galaxy. The thermal clips introduce greater logisitical complexity in every deployment everywhere.

And most importantly, I don't like it. Shooter combat is tedious enough without having to worry about ammo. In this respect, ME3's combat was a massive improvement, as there was far less need to shoot anything.

[Sylvius the Mad]

But in ME2, found it better to play an Engn and use abilities rather than weaponry.

I probably should have done that. I played an Engineer in both ME1 and ME3 and it worked well. But I enjoyed the sniper rifle so much in ME1 I wasn't willing to give it up. I couldn't one-shot anything with a pistol.

[UpUpAway]

Yes; policing clips by walking over them with our feet is certainly immersive. Can only imagine what occurs when Shepard sits down on occasion.

The task is annoying, and being coerced into doing it is more so.

 

Well, unlocking crates to loot them is annoying and being coerced into doing that is more so.  My point is that merely walking over a thermal clip is LESS IMMERSION BREAKING than looting several locked crates.  Stop trying to twist my words.

[Cyonan]

It demonstrably is. The same shot produces less damage in the second game. Nerfing one side in almost all circumstances outweighs rewarding the other under very limited circumstances.

Being a sniper in ME2 is much more challenging. That defeats the explanation provided for the clips.

 

From a numbers standpoint, this is false. Sniper rifles do not deal less damage per shot in ME2. Enemies have more hit points, which is where the nerf to sniper rifles hit. Enemies had stronger defenses in ME2.

 

The Mantis unupgraded does 263.1 damage per shot, which is more than any rank I sniper rifle from ME1 and even quite a few X rank sniper rifles. A fully upgraded Widow will do more damage per shot than any sniper rifle in Mass Effect 1. Only the Viper does less damage per shot but it also has 6 shots before overheating, which makes it clearly of a different design than the rifles we had in ME1.

 

They never said sniping was any more or less challenging, so it doesn't defeat any lore explanation.

 

A punishment means a penalty is being inflicted on you. Since you get base damage by hitting a target in the body it is, by definition, not a punishment because there is no penalty being inflicted on your damage.

 

Except the lore isn't immutable. They could have instead justified the clips by saying that the rapid heat output of the old designs caused newly discovered cellular damage to users, and to avoid that they switched to clips to contain that heat. Or something. Anything that made sense given the mechanics.

But the explanation they gave made none.

It took me 5 seconds to come up with that explanation. I'm sure their writers could have done even better.
If you say so.

 

but the lore they had was fine.

 

Hell in a way the lore even acknowledges what many players were doing in Mass Effect 1. It says firefights were typically won by who could fire more shots over time, and 2x Frictionless Materials was commonly used by players specifically for that reason.

 

If you say so.

I enjoyed them a lot less.

 

I enjoyed them a lot more.

 

I'm not sure what the point of this is. I already know you hate shooter combat, but that doesn't mean the game was going to ignore it and not try to make it better.

[UpUpAway]

In ME1, I had to use care with my SR or overheat it, and the cadence also helped time when to pop up and take my next shot and remain behind cover. In ME3, there are multiple options to increase Ammo supplies; Player's choices. While both games offer better solutions, neither of them offered unlimited firing solutions.

And generally, I hit what I aim at; simply am stationary a lot more than many other Players. Am still allergic to Action mode on all games, even on RPG's with Pause. But in ME2, found it better to play an Engn and use abilities rather than weaponry.

 

In ME1, using care to not overheat your SR when using HE rounds was pointless... it would overheat after every shot, period.

 

I get that both you and Sylvius don't like shooters and, hence, it makes sense that you like unlimited shooting capacity.  I prefer to have limited shooting capacity.  That still doesn't change the fact that looting crates breaks immersion even more so than picking up thermal clips.  The games all pretty much have a "gamey" mechanic in order to give players a means of upgrading their weapons... same as they have a "gamey" mechanic in a skill tree that's specific to certain classes.

 

Why is it so impossible for people to just understand that among the various options... I PREFER to have limited ammo and I'd like to see the mechanic such that you select your ammo load out based on mission intel (you leave home base with all the ammo you're going to get for the whole mission).  How ample that load out is (i.e. how much extra it allows for missed shots, etc.) can be changed with difficulty setting.  On the easiest settings it can be ridiculously high to becoming very skimpy on the highest difficulty settings.  The player chooses their difficulty setting.

[Elhanan]

In ME1, using care to not overheat your SR when using HE rounds was pointless... it would overheat after every shot, period.

And each Player had the option over ammo; some targets called for HE, some for Tungsten, etc. But none of it was unlimited, as it was controlled by cooldowns. Saying otherwise does not make it so.

[Sylvius the Mad]

From a numbers standpoint, this is false. Sniper rifles do not deal less damage per shot in ME2. Enemies have more hit points, which is where the nerf to sniper rifles hit. Enemies had stronger defenses in ME2.

The numbers are an abstraction. That's why I said they did less damage relative to the total health of the target.

If ordinary soldiers have 10× as many hit points, then the weapon needs to do 10× as much damage in order for it not to be a nerf.

You concede it was a nerf. That's the penalty I'm talking about.

A punishment means a penalty is being inflicted on you. Since you get base damage by hitting a target in the body it is, by definition, not a punishment because there is no penalty being inflicted on your damage.

It takes more body shots to kill an opponent in ME2.

but the lore they had was fine.

It made about as much sense as ammo powers.

That also needed a lore explanation and didn't get one.

Hell in a way the lore even acknowledges what many players were doing in Mass Effect 1. It says firefights were typically won by who could fire more shots over time, and 2x Frictionless Materials was commonly used by players specifically for that reason.

I enjoyed them a lot more.

I'm not sure what the point of this is. I already know you hate shooter combat, but that doesn't mean the game was going to ignore it and not try to make it better.

Honestly, if ME2 just hadn't had those class-based weapon restrictions, I could have just played an Engineer like I wanted and not have run into the this problem.

[Elhanan]

I probably should have done that. I played an Engineer in both ME1 and ME3 and it worked well. But I enjoyed the sniper rifle so much in ME1 I wasn't willing to give it up. I couldn't one-shot anything with a pistol.

The Combat Drone annoys most targets enough that it acts as another ally on the squad. And an enemy not focused on Shepard allows for a variety of possibilities.

[dreamgazer]

My point is that merely walking over a thermal clip is LESS IMMERSION BREAKING than looting several locked crates.

... how? Thermal clips were just plopped there in piles for the player's convenience, whereas people actually store stuff in scattered locked crates. The Thermal Clip Fairy should be spaced before going heading off to Andromeda, and everyone should do the smart thing by reverting to (or sticking with, depending on when we leave) overheating weapons when venturing into entirely alien territory.

[Iakus]

In ME1, using care to not overheat your SR when using HE rounds was pointless... it would overheat after every shot, period.

And if you want to turn your sniper rifle into a rocket launcher, that's your choice.  And there are repercussions for that choice

 

But using ammo other than High Explosive opened up other possibilities.  Including a SR that could fire two or even three rounds in rapid succession without overheating.

[Elhanan]

Well, unlocking crates to loot them is annoying and being coerced into doing that is more so.  My point is that merely walking over a thermal clip is LESS IMMERSION BREAKING than looting several locked crates.  Stop trying to twist my words.

Looting containers can be annoying (eg; NWN OC), but is also optional with few exceptions. And again the above assertion appears to be invalid, as looking inside containers for items is immersive; picking up litter not so much.

[Shadow Recon117]

I'd rather have thermal clips. having 2 frictionless materials in guns and holding down the trigger was boring and not challenging, especially in ME1 you didn't have to use cover unless you were playing insanity.

[Elhanan]

I'd rather have thermal clips. having 2 frictionless materials in guns and holding down the trigger was boring and not challenging, especially in ME1 you didn't have to use cover unless you were playing insanity.

It is the Players choice to use two Frictionless mods; no choice in ME2. And I died occasionally on Hard difficulty in my first campaign; did play on Insanity after that.

I will say that ME2 Insanity is much harder, but I conjecture this is because of fewer and restrictive weapons, and limited powers are less effective.

[Pasquale1234]

They produce the same end essentially, a cap on the number of times you can use a power or the weapon in any amount of time. They are not very dissimilar given the amount of ammo that is actually in the game.

It is only in the very fringes of hypothetical that the cooldown for powers allows you unlimited power use in a mission. That mission has to have unlimited length, which doesn't really even make sense. Practically speaking, how long does it take to do a mission only using your powers, not using weapons, and hiding squadmates where they do nothing? It isn't even possible to finish a mission with some powers (like Overload) since they will not actually finish all enemy types.

Powers are subject to cooldown among all squad members. Only Shepard is subject to ammo limitations.

Cooldowns happen automatically over time - all you need to do is wait. Refilling ammo requires the player to chase down an enemy drop or find fresh clips planted somewhere in the level.

Weapons can be used versus any of the 4 layers an enemy presents: barriers, shields, armor, health. Some weapons are more effective versus some of those layers than others, but every weapon does some damage against any of them. That isn't entirely true of powers - a shielded enemy will walk right through a singularity, taking minimal (if any) damage.

Why would Shepard attempt to use an SMG to strip shields from a long range enemy instead of using her perfectly good sniper rifle w/ disruptor ammo? Oh, right. Because the sniper rifle is out of clips.
 

As I said, I had no problem. Maybe its because my Shepard can adapt and overcome without worrying about running out of ammo.

So can mine. I just can't RP the type of character I'd like to RP, because the mechanics won't let me.

For this reason, I find it unfun. And I've already said all of this multiple times in this discussion.
 

Did you actually read the post, or you just take this as an excuse to insult him?

It's the BSN way. Don't read what a post actually says, or read a bunch of stuff into it that isn't there, so you can snark at the poster.

[UpUpAway]

Looting containers can be annoying (eg; NWN OC), but is also optional with few exceptions. And again the above assertion appears to be invalid, as looking inside containers for items is immersive; picking up litter not so much.

 

Sorry, playing a QTE to open a crate is NOT immersive.  Having to sift through lists of items and decide to dump them into Omni-gel or add them to your inventory while the battle is paused is not immersive.  Do you even know what immersive means?  ... and I never said that "picking up litter" was immersive... I said it does not "break immersion" as severely as looting crates does.

 

On the other hand, the pressure of having to make every shot count IS immersive.

[Cyonan]

A choice the game doesn't support because raisins.

 

The game wants you to have to change your strategy at times.

 

I don't consider this a bad thing, so pointing this out to me isn't going to convince me of anything.

 

There was a change made to the lore to accommodate thermal clips.

Even then, they weren't explained in a way that made sense relative to the actual mechanics as implemented. They were supposedly universal, yet you couldn't use them in the weapon of choice. The game automatically allocated them among weapons for you.

 

Actually the universal part was represented by picking up a single thermal clip giving one to every weapon you had. The part that doesn't follow the lore strictly is that reloading a gun should consume a thermal clip for every weapon.

 

Something tells me people would have liked that less, though.

 

Weapon breakage makes sense - not only IRL, but also lorewise.

The way thermal clips were implemented in ME2, it may as well have been explained as your sniper rifle breaking after a few shots, and you needed to pick up a repair part from a fallen enemy to use that weapon again. The net effect would have been identical.

And the net effect was anathema to RP. You couldn't play a purely (or even primarily) sniper Shepard, even in some of the maps that would otherwise support long-distance gunplay, because of the lameass thermal clip mechanics.

BG allowed you to decide how many arrows / bolts to carry out into the field with you, subject to inventory limits. In Bethesda titles (I'm familiar with FO3 & Skyrim), your character starts out with not much in the way of ammo / arrows, but can gradually build up a comfortable supply. You can argue that the weightlessness (and apparently lack of volume) of ammo / arrows in those Bethesda titles is unrealistic, but you can impose limits on your character if you so choose. The game mechanics do not interfere with that, and allow you to feel a natural sense of progression as you increase the supply of ammo / arrows you have on hand. ME2, OTOH, had these convoluted upgrade trees where you'd have available upgrades waiting until you could unlock them.

The thermal clip mechanics as implemented in ME2 supported the playstyle of those who enjoy min/max optimization, and/or enjoy swapping to the optimal weapon to strip each layer of defense the enemy presents. And that's great that your playstyle was well-supported. The thing is, you could choose to do that even without the per weapon limits they imposed.

It does not, however support a playstyle of anyone wanting to blow through the game using only a specific weapon or weapon type. Not on any difficulty.

 

The argument is the same, though. You complain about not being able to use the sniper rifle for 100% of Mass Effect 2 and I couldn't use a Bastard Sword for 100% of Baldur's Gate.

 

You're merely using lore to try and back up your argument. I couldn't play a primarily Bastard Sword wielding Paladin in BG because they kept breaking. Why is that okay for BG but not okay for Mass Effect?

 

That's actually why I like to frequently use BG as an example. People seem to give it a pass for the same complaints they have about Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I swear it's like people think Baldur's Gate can do no wrong, and everything the game does that I can criticize it for somebody has an excuse as to why it's not a problem.

 

I don't see how the upgrade paths in ME2 for weapons was convoluted. You had 6-7 damage upgrades of 10% each for every weapon type, as well as a few extra bonus effects.

 

I've already gone through Mass Effect 2 using Assault Rifle for 90% of the game on a higher difficulty so I feel pretty confident saying I could get that to 100% on easy. I'd almost be willing to bet that I could do it with sniper rifles on easy, too. Probably shotguns too if I played Vanguard now that I think about it.

 

This is assuming I'm not going to be hit with some stupid restriction like I can't use powers at all either.

[Pasquale1234]

Really? How? It was considered the best out of the whole trilogy

By some. Others consider it the worst of the lot, for a variety of reasons.