Sorry, playing a QTE to open a crate is NOT immersive.
I never said that "picking up litter" was immersive... I said it does not "break immersion" as severely as looting crates does.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I was looking for a challenge yesterday, I've started an ME1 playthrough with a soldier on normal setting. I'm intending to use only my Shotgun and the Mako (unless I can figure out a way to take out the armatures in the open on Therum using only a shotgun). We'll see how I make out. Then, of course, I'll move him into ME2 and ME3 and I'm more confident that I can use just the shotgun in those two games. Mordin's recruitment mission might get a little dicey (since I normally use a lot of sniper rifle in that one), but I can always direct Garrus to take out the mooks up high for me.
Limited ammo is cool, weapon breaking, not.
I'd be supportive of that.
That isn't what we got in ME2 or ME3.
Thank you.
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 nerf isn't exactly a penalty being imposed upon you. Especially not when applied from one game to the next.
From a mechanical standpoint the enemies got better defenses, your weapons didn't get weaker. You are assuming that armour technology advanced at the exact same rate that weapon technology did, which is not explicitly stated by the lore meaning anything is possible.
It takes more body shots to kill an opponent in ME2..
Capn already demonstrated that it takes more than 1 shot to kill targets in ME1 even with the HMWSR X, other than with Assassinate which has a lengthy cooldown and would need to be compared to something in ME2 that gives a damage boost like Tactical Cloak or Adrenaline Rush.
but the point is that Mass Effect 2 does not penalize you for getting a body shot. You do not suffer damage loss for doing so, meaning by definition there is no penalty. Rebalancing from the previous game isn't actually a penalty.
It made about as much sense as ammo powers.
That also needed a lore explanation and didn't get one.
The lore makes sense when you look at it. I find that most people either misunderstand something, or feel that 2x Frictionless Materials + Marksman/Overkill giving you infinite amounts of fire was something that was actually canon rather than a poorly balanced game mechanic.
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.
The game wants you to have to change your strategy at times.
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.
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.
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.
On the other hand, the pressure of having to make every shot count IS immersive.
Thank you.
Really? Looking in a container to find things in a container is not immersive? And running over littered clips from the battlefield is more believable?
To quote: "Do you even know what immersive means?"
Making every shot count in RL also includes cover fire; keeping the enemy down allowing others to move to a desired location. Now while I have more experience using artillery for desired effects in battle, I can say that records indicate in small arms fire, most rounds do not hit. And in my experience, one tends to be trained to aim for center mass; not head shots, though Snipers may have exceptions. But these are games, so whatever; simply will recommend avoiding informing others what is immersive.
"Immersive" definition - "To engage wholly or deeply; absorb" -
So, stopping to do a QTE that calls up a list of items that you have to decide to take into inventory or convert to Omni-Gel while, for example, a bunch of drugged scientists, walk around watching the commander who just saved their asses clean them out of all of their supplies is "immersive" to your role playing as that commander, eh? Sorry, definitely not immersive for me and is "immersion breaking" because now I'm focusing more on what I have in my inventory and whether or not this item is better than the one I have, etc. than in, say, calling the fleet in to rescue said scientists.
Definition of Immersive in an electronics sense is given farther down the page: <a href="http://www.thefreedi...">immersive</a>
It means to stimulate more senses than just sight and sound. Feeling the pressure of 1 shot 1 kill is immersive in exactly that sense.
"Immersive" definition - "To engage wholly or deeply; absorb" -
So, stopping to do a QTE that calls up a list of items that you have to decide to take into inventory or convert to Omni-Gel while, for example, a bunch of drugged scientists, walk around watching the commander who just saved their asses clean them out of all of their supplies is "immersive" to your role playing as that commander, eh? Sorry, definitely not immersive for me and is "immersion breaking" because now I'm focusing more on what I have in my inventory and whether or not this item is better than the one I have, etc. than in, say, calling the fleet in to rescue said scientists.
"Immersive" definition - "To engage wholly or deeply; absorb" -
So, stopping to do a QTE that calls up a list of items that you have to decide to take into inventory or convert to Omni-Gel while, for example, a bunch of drugged scientists, walk around watching the commander who just saved their asses clean them out of all of their supplies is "immersive" to your role playing as that commander, eh? Sorry, definitely not immersive for me and is "immersion breaking" because now I'm focusing more on what I have in my inventory and whether or not this item is better than the one I have, etc. than in, say, calling the fleet in to rescue said scientists.
I wouldn't mind increased immersion on this front, where urgent actions are taken immediately and where you get your resources from your homebase in most cases, and can only loot from enemies.
Mostly, it just makes you change weapons if you want to continue to shoot at all.
That was the result of attempting to brute force a single approach to enemies.
My interpretation is that the universal part was represented by the fact that a single type of clip could be used in every weapon (except heavies).
I think it would have been easier all the way around if they'd treated clips as a pool instead of the per weapon allocations.
Thermal clips are universal but when you pick one up in Mass Effect you get an extra clip for every gun. This part follows lore because one clip would mean it could theoretically go in any gun.
If we want to talk how it would realistically be in lore, then reloading a gun should also consume a thermal clip for every gun. You would have to equalize spare ammo among all weapons to be the same number of "clips" per gun but this would primarily only help pistols as most other weapons carried ~10 spare clips worth of ammo.
It wouldn't imply an increase in how much you can carry, which is what people seem to actually want.
You were able to manage the number of swords you had on hand via inventory allocations. Also, as you mentioned, there was an enhanced version that didn't break. There was no such animal in ME2. In ME3, ammo crates were so ubiquitous, it became irrelevant.
There are upgrade to ammo capacity in Mass Effect 2 you can get with armour. Not a huge increase, but you can increase it.
Mass Effect 2 doesn't use a managed inventory, which would suggest your carry capacity is 100% used by thermal clips. You just don't have a very big inventory.
Give it a go and see how that works for you.
To be honest I'm feeling pretty confident about sniper rifles, partially because I know I have good aim and can headshot reliably against ME2 AI which is very predictable in its movements.
Though I'm sure somebody will find an excuse to use to claim it's "not valid" =P
That was the result of attempting to brute force a single approach to enemies.
Thermal clips are universal but when you pick one up in Mass Effect you get an extra clip for every gun. This part follows lore because one clip would mean it could theoretically go in any gun.
If we want to talk how it would realistically be in lore, then reloading a gun should also consume a thermal clip for every gun. You would have to equalize spare ammo among all weapons to be the same number of "clips" per gun but this would primarily only help pistols as most other weapons carried ~10 spare clips worth of ammo.
It wouldn't imply an increase in how much you can carry, which is what people seem to actually want.
To be honest I'm feeling pretty confident about sniper rifles, partially because I know I have good aim and can headshot reliably against ME2 AI which is very predictable in its movements.
Again, that's different than how I interpreted it.
Every weapon has 2 values - shots per load, and max (capacity) you can carry for that weapon. The Mantis was 1/9, meaning you needed to reload after every single shot, and you could never carry more than 9 shots total for it (capacity). Predator is 12/60, Locust is 20/240.
Start a mission w/ those weapons and a full load of clips, take your 9 shots with the Mantis, and you'll still have 60 shots' worth of clips for the Predator and 240 for the Locust. Take a dozen shots with the Predator to complete the battle, and the first clip you pick up may refill your Predator's capacity or that of your Mantis. You'll need to pick up more than one clip to completely refill your Mantis, however.
At least, that's how I remember it working - it's been quite a long time since I played ME2.
I wasn't saying that's how I interpreted it. I'm saying that's how it should have worked if we were going to get nitpicky about "not following lore".
The way it worked in Mass Effect 2 was that every weapon consumed ammo separately. Firing a shot with your Mantis only consumed a "Mantis ammo", however picking up a Thermal Clip gave you a pre determined amount of your spare ammo back for every gun you had. This wouldn't account for your current "clip" being partially empty like in Mass Effect 3, so if you wanted to get back to 72 total shots with your Predator you had to make sure to reload the gun first.
If one wanted to make it 100% strict lore following the way it would need to work would be:
1. Since spare ammo is just thermal clips all guns need to have equalized spare ammo. So it would change to say 1/9 Mantis shots, 12/108 Predator shots, and 20/180 Locust shots. Basically you can carry 9 spare thermal clips(or whatever the number they decide on would be).
2. Reloading the Mantis now reduces your ammo count by 1 Mantis shot, 12 Predator shots, and 20 Locust shots. This is because you consumed 1 out of your 9 spare Thermal Clips, so all guns lose the ammo that they could have gained from that.
3. Reloading a partially expended Thermal Clip now makes you lose the entire rest of the clip. If you fire 6 Predator shots and reload, you lose the remaining 6 rounds(as well as the Mantis and Locust rounds).
What I'm noting is that I don't think people would have been happier with that system if the complaint was they felt ammo was too limited, unless they drastically increased the total capacity of Thermal Clips you could carry which is just increasing the ammo count which has nothing to do with making them a universal pool.
That's great - but since a lot of the battles throw more enemies at you than you have SR shots available, you will need to use powers, swap weapons, rely on squadmates, melee, and/or pick up clips to get through some of them. But I've pretty much said that all along.
The goal is to use only sniper rifles for the entire game and basically never fire another weapon. I'm still allowed to use powers and picking up ammo is fair game(although I will avoid using nothing but powers to beat entire fights). The only exception will be the first mission where I'm limited to just a pistol, but as far as I recall there isn't any other cases of that happening in Mass Effect 2. I also basically never used melee to begin with in ME2 anyway.
This is an experiment as to if a playstyle is viable(in this case, playing with strictly a sniper rifle as my firearm), not how badly I can gimp myself while still being able to beat the game. Not using powers makes as much sense to me as saying "I want to beat Mass Effect 1 without spending a single skill point while wielding an unmodded Avenger I as my only weapon".
Most likely I would play as an Infiltrator and rely primarily on Tactical Cloak and Disruptor Rounds to increase my sniper rifle damage. The alternative is Soldier, but I don't think I'll need the time dilation of Adrenaline Rush to increase headshot reliability.
LMFAO. I've NEVER run out of ammo in any mission and when you start getting low, enemies are more likely to drop ammo when killed. Also, Ordinance Packs, breh. 
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.
Right, but once you drop the rate of fire you have obviously dropped the rate of fire.
Assassination isn't a strawman. You claimed that ME1 allows you to one-shot a host of enemies with sniper rifles, or at the very least you are killing them all much faster with the SRs in that game than in ME2.
The only way to one-shot even basic enemies is with Assassination. If you are one-shotting them otherwise, by all means please post up the specific circumstances. What is the rate of fire you are using for feathering? You said these things were demonstrable, so please demonstrate them.
HMWSR VII and X are essentially the best case ME1 weapons. The only way to fire them rapidly and forever is with dual Frictionless mods. The reason I didn't test dual frictionless at Level 48 was because my Shep hadn't even acquired two yet. Lowest Frictionless is rank VII which does not even have a chance to drop before Shepard is Level 37. You can't get HMWSR X until Level 50 with the Rich achievement. These are end game items. If it is really a mid-late game rate of fire party you want then ME2 has the Viper.
HMWSR VII with Frictionless / Scram needs to drop to something like 25 shots a minute to avoid actually overheating. That setup takes 3 shots with Shredder VII to kill a level 48 Husk... which means the cycle is still ~7 seconds. Can I kill a ME2 Husk with a rifle in faster than 7 seconds past midgame (Level 24)? Almost certainly.
Each Frictionless you add drops damage per shot ~15-20% compared to Rail Extension or Scram, so everything higher than basic tier enemies are going to start accumulating extra shots to kill. Do you want absolute ROF (highest average is basically 60 in ME1 running dual frictionless), or a little less and maybe kill a mid-tier in two shots?
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.
The lore is the lore, and it is consistent with itself. The lore doesn't mention logistic problems, so they must not be a problem.
Mostly, it just makes you change weapons if you want to continue to shoot at all.
My interpretation is that the universal part was represented by the fact that a single type of clip could be used in every weapon (except heavies).
I think it would have been easier all the way around if they'd treated clips as a pool instead of the per weapon allocations.
You were able to manage the number of swords you had on hand via inventory allocations. Also, as you mentioned, there was an enhanced version that didn't break. There was no such animal in ME2. In ME3, ammo crates were so ubiquitous, it became irrelevant.
Give it a go and see how that works for you.
But that isn't what ME2 does. Even when you do make every shot count, you'll still run out of ammo for certain weapons.
I don't object to ammo limitations as a concept, just the way it was implemented in ME2.
If I'm not mistaken, aren't we discussing ME:A here?... which includes possible changes to the way in which limited ammo (i.e. thermal clips) could be implemented differently rather than just reverted back to the way it infinite ammo was implemented in ME1... both previous systems having their drawbacks.
Strawman examples not required. Looking in a container to find goods therein is realistic, and Take All is a mechanic available to speed things along.
And it is less immersive for me to acquire scattered clips; annoyingly so because one may not have ammo readily available ahead. Picking them up with one's feet is just another mechanic; one that can often be Try and Try again.
Looting crates is no more "realistic" and picking up dropped ammo if one is truly run low on ammo... and neither "believability" nor "realism" have much to do with "immersiveness." If you want a turn on Sylvius argument about limiting player choices being bad for a role play game... well, looting crates "forces" me to role play as a soldier who breaks the law (Geneva convention - on looting during wartime). ME1 does not allow you to buy enough different mods to really equip yourself and your team without doing any "looting" and even penalizes you if you don't loot because you automatically lose access to quite a bit of the experience points available in the game. Furthermore, since you don't know ahead of time which crates contain objective items (such a matriarch's writings, IDs tags, etc.), it interferes with that level of role playing the game without consulting a Wiki to tell you which crates you should hack and which ones you can just leave behind (i.e. without metagaming).
The reason I say that thermal clip collection is less immersion breaking than looting is because it breaks the flow of the battle for a briefer period of time and does not take the player's view out to various "game inventory" screens to accomplish the task. The player stays surrounded (i.e. immersed) in the environment of the battle itself.
Then don't loot crates. There's no avoiding the sight of piles of thermal clips scattered around, though, many times in places where they shouldn't be.
This is easily explainable once you learn Elizabeth from BioShock can hop across dimensions. She is truly the ammo fairy of videogamedom.
If I'm not mistaken, aren't we discussing ME:A here?... which includes possible changes to the way in which limited ammo (i.e. thermal clips) could be implemented differently rather than just reverted back to the way it infinite ammo was implemented in ME1... both previous systems having their drawbacks.
I think we kind of delved into a discussion about the ammo mechanics of Mass Effect 2, rather than it being anything about ME:A.
I imagine that for ME:A we'll get something similar to what Mass Effect 3 had where it's normal ammo with reloads but they give us far more than we should ever need. They may also include a weapon or two that tries to recapture the old feel of the overheat mechanic like they did with the Lancer.
Looting crates is no more "realistic" and picking up dropped ammo if one is truly run low on ammo... and neither "believability" nor "realism" have much to do with "immersiveness." If you want a turn on Sylvius argument about limiting player choices being bad for a role play game... well, looting crates "forces" me to role play as a soldier who breaks the law (Geneva convention - on looting during wartime). ME1 does not allow you to buy enough different mods to really equip yourself and your team without doing any "looting" and even penalizes you if you don't loot because you automatically lose access to quite a bit of the experience points available in the game. Furthermore, since you don't know ahead of time which crates contain objective items (such a matriarch's writings, IDs tags, etc.), it interferes with that level of role playing the game without consulting a Wiki to tell you which crates you should hack and which ones you can just leave behind (i.e. without metagaming).
The reason I say that thermal clip collection is less immersion breaking than looting is because it breaks the flow of the battle for a briefer period of time and does not take the player's view out to various "game inventory" screens to accomplish the task. The player stays surrounded (i.e. immersed) in the environment of the battle itself.
About thermal clips. Everyone knows that those are patented by a company called ITC (Intergalactic Thermal Clips). We'll probably see them popup in the codex of MEA somewhere. No idea why this wasn't mentioned before, though. Those guys in the Phoenix Cluster made a fortune from those. And from paperclips, BTW.
What I didn't like about weapons in general, was situations in which I was equipped with a shotgun and a sniper riffle only, and was forced to use a pistol. But somehow I was always lucky. I didn't have one, but it automagically appeared in my hand nevertheless. And if I did have a pistol, it was changed for another under-powered one. These were really weird, though. It could kill any foe in one shot! That pistol also featured infinite clips. Too bad these were somehow lost a second later after use.
If that isn't great role playing then I don't know what is.
We all want it to be good, no discussion there.
Some consider ME1 the better of the ME trilogy as its most RPG. Others swing the other way, including myself because I'll play just about any game as long as it's good. imo ME2 and 3 (bar the ending) were better.
Bioware has it's roots in RPG, but is there room in customers hearts to accept a good game with RPG elements. I would think there is a broader market for bioware making games which aren't just RPG. If this keeps Bioware afloat, isn't that a good thing.
I just want a good game and I want Bioware to not be swallowed up by EA, what do you think?
If Bioware continue to release dumbed down, shallow games with mass appeal, taking large segments of their customer base for granted then the Bioware of old is truly dead and so no, Bioware going under would be a very good thing. The first game's RPG elements weren't terribly well done so no I don't want to see a return to them but should MEA have RPG elements that are not cumbersome and confusing and for once, innovative and genre defining then there is nothing to suggest a good RPG can't be a great game and that's the Bioware I want to see make games.
Nope; Shepard takes a time out to police clips, removing urgency from the task at hand. Or as some have noted, running out of cover to gather them. If not, then they proceed forward with less than filled stores increasing the need to take other options. Not as bad when the other options are better than pop gun pistols, but if the weapon is a primary tactical choice, full ammo clips is desired.
I've actually gotten through several missions in ME2 without stopping to pick an additional thermal clip at all; so whether or not you'll run out even just using the initial ammo load depends on how well you use your weapons and powers and squad. You're making the choice to "police" the battlefield for clips because you're too insecure to advance without full ammo... and the game allows you to make that choice.
I wasn't saying that's how I interpreted it. I'm saying that's how it should have worked if we were going to get nitpicky about "not following lore".
If one wanted to make it 100% strict lore following the way it would need to work would be:
1. Since spare ammo is just thermal clips all guns need to have equalized spare ammo. So it would change to say 1/9 Mantis shots, 12/108 Predator shots, and 20/180 Locust shots. Basically you can carry 9 spare thermal clips(or whatever the number they decide on would be).
2. Reloading the Mantis now reduces your ammo count by 1 Mantis shot, 12 Predator shots, and 20 Locust shots. This is because you consumed 1 out of your 9 spare Thermal Clips, so all guns lose the ammo that they could have gained from that.
3. Reloading a partially expended Thermal Clip now makes you lose the entire rest of the clip. If you fire 6 Predator shots and reload, you lose the remaining 6 rounds(as well as the Mantis and Locust rounds).
What I'm noting is that I don't think people would have been happier with that system if the complaint was they felt ammo was too limited, unless they drastically increased the total capacity of Thermal Clips you could carry which is just increasing the ammo count which has nothing to do with making them a universal pool.
The goal is to use only sniper rifles for the entire game and basically never fire another weapon. I'm still allowed to use powers and picking up ammo is fair game(although I will avoid using nothing but powers to beat entire fights). The only exception will be the first mission where I'm limited to just a pistol, but as far as I recall there isn't any other cases of that happening in Mass Effect 2. I also basically never used melee to begin with in ME2 anyway.
This is an experiment as to if a playstyle is viable(in this case, playing with strictly a sniper rifle as my firearm), not how badly I can gimp myself while still being able to beat the game. Not using powers makes as much sense to me as saying "I want to beat Mass Effect 1 without spending a single skill point while wielding an unmodded Avenger I as my only weapon".
Most likely I would play as an Infiltrator and rely primarily on Tactical Cloak and Disruptor Rounds to increase my sniper rifle damage. The alternative is Soldier, but I don't think I'll need the time dilation of Adrenaline Rush to increase headshot reliability.
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