106 réponses à ce sujet

[Laughing_Man]

During ME1, Biotics were an extremely effective method of crowd control, with a singularity able to lock down a room full of enemies.

And an evolved combo of Lift and Throw was able to render even a Geth Colossus helpless...

 

To balance things, the direct damage was rather low, and Biotic use had a relatively long cool-down.

 

In ME 2, Biotics were "balanced" from their ME1 version to work only against red HP bars, and received shorter CD timers.

 

Unfortunately, this change seemed to have spilled the baby with the bathwater and made it so there would be no real reason to take much else once you had a primer and a detonator - throw and warp. Singularity is mostly useless, lift is very situational and is mostly useless, shockwave and slam are similar.

 

From the "fun" aspect of things, Biotics started to feel repetitive and useless.

 

Most enemies were almost dead once their HP bar became red, and at this point it's faster to just continue shooting than to use whatever biotic power to "finish them off". As a result, what you are left with most of the time is spamming warp and throw.

 

In ME3 the situation remained more or less the same. Warp & throw remained the undisputed kings of Biotics,

with other powers getting use only on rare occasions.

 

It was all about Biotic detonations and powers like Flare (essentially a prepackaged Biotic explosion) or barrier.

 

 

The thing is, crowd control was a fun part of biotics during ME1, and I don't the throw & warp spam is "working as intended".

 

MP had some biotic powers that had interesting implications, but most of them were variations on existing ones.

 

I would like to see Biotics becoming more varied and fun to play in ME:A.

 

If you have any opinions or ideas on how to achieve something like this, feel free to share.

[Laughing_Man]

Another point:

 

Weapons were possible to upgrade in ME3 to the point that they made Biotics mostly a waste of time in terms of DPS,

and considering that DPS is all Biotics had at this point, there was little reason to continue using offensive biotics aside from flavor.

 

One way to fix this would be the option to upgrade biotic implants in parallel to weapon upgrades.

[capn233]

I would disagree with the characterization of biotics in ME2.

 

First off the claim that enemies were already dead once protection stripped seems highly suspect, especially when talking about Hardcore or Insanity, which are the only two modes that have extensive protections.  The vast majority of enemies encountered have more health than protection hit points, and on top of that all guns and damage powers have multipliers to protections, but there are no multipliers to health.  Hence it is always easier to damage protections than health, even ignoring the difference in hit points.  Basic protection on Insanity is 150 (it is 75 on hardcore), but most units have 200-250 health, although "fragile" units have ~160 (mostly merc heavies, ironically).

 

Clearly I disagree that various biotics are useless in ME2, although Shockwave is such a niche power that it isn't all that practically useful.  Of course that is only one power.  Singularity as useless is another old claim, but again it doesn't make sense when you consider that it is practically the only power in the vanilla game that can CC a protected unit at all.  Pull can't be useless given that it will lift anything on health without leveling to max, ragdoll grants 100% damage bonus, ragdoll instantly kills husks, it primes for warp explosions, and it is on a fast cooldown.  It is actually a great bread and butter power when employed correctly.

 

As far as combo spam, given that only one class can even self combo with warp explosions in ME2, they are not nearly as pervasive a problem to the ME2 metagame as they are in ME3.  And really this is a bonus item for Adept, a way to give it some AOE damage that nearly every other class lacks. It is a tool to be exploited in the correct situation, not a rock to bludgeon through every situation as BE's are in ME3.  Since "physics combos" were still a thing in ME2, if you cared about efficiency a nice Heavy Throw should kill a basic lifted via Pull or Singularity, while cooling down a good deal faster than Warp.

 

Crowd control is still a big part of the game in ME2 if you are trying to get through the game efficiently.  The enemies do enough damage and take long enough to kill that CC actually matters since nobody is really running through the game just one or two shotting everything as they can do in ME3 Insanity.  The change with protections didn't lessen the usefulness of crowd control, nor did shared cooldowns.  They just made it so that the application required a little more forethought, instead of alpha-striking a bunch of CC powers whenever you entered a room.

 

As far as ME3 goes, its balance was not good.  However, the claim that Biotics were a waste of time makes hardly any sense to me at all given that you could have top tier weapon damage and top tier biotic damage via combo spam simultaneously.

 

I would agree with the very general point that crowd control needs to be more important in MEA relative to ME3.  However a lot of the utility of crowd control depends on other factors besides simply whether or not a power can ragdoll any enemy whenever you see them.  Best simplified it is really about how long it takes to kill an enemy relative to their numbers and the damage they can inflict on the player.

[AngryFrozenWater]

I wish that biotics had the same deadly impact as gun fire. In the old titles I can only achieve that by lowering the difficulty. At higher difficulty guns are the only way to go. That's too bad.

 

Edit: Also, I have no idea why the type of ammo became a power in ME2 and ME3. It's like BW ran out of ideas to dream up new powers. And why do I need to learn ammo X to start learning ammo Y? Ammo should be a weapon mod, like it was before.

[LiechockiRJ]

 

Most enemies were almost dead once their HP bar became red

 

that´s why I only use´s tech squadmates and almost my chars are tech. 

 

Why bother to use biotics if I can give a simple shot?

 

Only like reave, warp and throw for combos

 

biotics sux (in 2 and 3. Pretty awesome in 1)

[Laughing_Man]

I would disagree with the characterization of biotics in ME2.

 

...

 

I would agree with the very general point that crowd control needs to be more important in MEA relative to ME3.

 

Admittedly, I may have generalized a little too much when I wrote about ME2 and ME3 at once.

 

Are there ways to min-max damage output with crowd control and play ME2 more efficiently with Biotics? Sure.

But this is not a competition, and neither is this about MP. There is no real *need* to use all those other powers most of the time, nothing is pushing you to experiment and use different powers to counter different enemies.

 

A Biotic class should be about biotics first and foremost, not the SMG class that also uses biotics.

 

 

I'm glad to see you agree regarding the potential of crowd control abilities.

[straykat]

I've said this elsewhere, but environmental effects would go a long way. I don't even think the powers need too much change. The world/engine itself does. You should be able to hurl all kinds of objects with biotics. You should able to do anything their cutscenes or novels do, but within gameplay. 

[capn233]

But this is not a competition, and neither is this about MP. There is no real *need* to use all those other powers most of the time, nothing is pushing you to experiment and use different powers to counter different enemies.

 

A Biotic class should be about biotics first and foremost, not the SMG class that also uses biotics.

 

I don't understand the "no need" argument.  You don't have to use biotics in ME1, and certainly you don't have to use all of them.  As you point out, biotics basically did 0 damage in ME1, Warp had a very small DOT, there was a little force from Throw.  Damage came from Pistols.

 

ME2 Adept isn't an SMG class anymore than the ME1 Adept was a pistol class.  The difference is that power-only runs won't be excruciatingly long to execute as they would be in ME1.

 

Of course ME3 ramped up the power, but it effectively lost any nuance or complexity.  Succinctly, enemies are easily dispatched.  It's all relative, either the enemies had too few HP or the combos and weapons did too much damage.

 

I personally don't think they should make any class that is efficient to play on high difficulty with powers alone, just as I don't think any class should be able to skirt by on guns alone efficiently.  I would prefer that the game be geared towards rewarding players that combine power, weapon and squad management efficiently, at least on the top difficulties.

[Cyonan]

Admittedly, I may have generalized a little too much when I wrote about ME2 and ME3 at once.

 

Are there ways to min-max damage output with crowd control and play ME2 more efficiently with Biotics? Sure.

But this is not a competition, and neither is this about MP. There is no real *need* to use all those other powers most of the time, nothing is pushing you to experiment and use different powers to counter different enemies.

 

A Biotic class should be about biotics first and foremost, not the SMG class that also uses biotics.

 

 

I'm glad to see you agree regarding the potential of crowd control abilities.

 

There's never a need to actually use powers throughout the series. The fact that they give me a gun which isn't entirely worthless as an Adept automatically means I could beat the game ignoring all my powers if I so choose.

 

Even in Mass Effect 1 there really wasn't experimentation. There was using Singularity to wipe out an entire room of enemies because biotics were downright broken in that game in terms of balance.

 

Mass Effect 3 probably allowed for the most experimentation because of the 3 ranks worth of evolutions for each ability. The problem there is that balance wise biotics usually came down to just spamming biotic explosions rather than doing any CC. That and many of the evolutions simply weren't on par with what their competition was.

 

I've always seen the Adept as somebody who relies primarily on ability use, but still has a gun to augment their damage output while they're on cooldown.

[Wulfram]

I think you underestimate Lift and Singularity in ME3. Short cool down is good, and there are plenty of unshielded enemies in single player. Warp had too slow a cooldown to be really efficient.

Though this doesn't counter your basic point. Biotics have become too much about combos. Though I wouldn't mind the focus being on combos if we could have some variety in the combos - Lift + Throw shouldn't do the same thing as Singularity + Warp.

[Laughing_Man]

I personally don't think they should make any class that is efficient to play on high difficulty with powers alone, just as I don't think any class should be able to skirt by on guns alone efficiently.  I would prefer that the game be geared towards rewarding players that combine power, weapon and squad management efficiently, at least on the top difficulties.

 

So essentially you think that less choice is a good thing?

 

Soldier class is practically a weapon-only class anyway. The fact that they made ammo into a "power" is irrelevant.

 

I would suggest creating different Biotic techniques for different purposes, some for pure damage, some for pure crowd control, some a mixture of both.

And yes, the ability to mostly rely on Biotics should be there as well.

 

 

There's never a need to actually use powers throughout the series. The fact that they give me a gun which isn't entirely worthless as an Adept automatically means I could beat the game ignoring all my powers if I so choose.

 

Even in Mass Effect 1 there really wasn't experimentation. There was using Singularity to wipe out an entire room of enemies because biotics were downright broken in that game in terms of balance.

 

Maybe *need* is not the best word, let's use encouragement instead.

 

If you want to play the entire game with only a pistol that's a valid choice, but I'd like also to see Biotics becoming effective on their own merit.

 

Biotics are supposedly the mage class of ME, yet compared to mages they are a boring one-trick-pony, and not for the lack of potential mind you,

more because of bad design.

[Laughing_Man]

I think you underestimate Lift and Singularity in ME3. Short cool down is good, and there are plenty of unshielded enemies in single player. Warp had too slow a cooldown to be really efficient.

Though this doesn't counter your basic point. Biotics have become too much about combos. Though I wouldn't mind the focus being on combos if we could have some variety in the combos - Lift + Throw shouldn't do the same thing as Singularity + Warp.

 

Throw had the shortest CD as far as I remember, not lift, I guess a lift+throw / lift+warp combo works as well, but on targets that can't be lifted you can't prime a detonation with lift IIRC.

 

Biotics have almost as much theoretical potential as mages when it comes to destruction and crowd control, they should be more varied and less about weapons.

[Cyonan]

Maybe *need* is not the best word, let's use encouragement instead.

 

If you want to play the entire game with only a pistol that's a valid choice, but I'd like also to see Biotics becoming effective on their own merit.

 

Biotics are supposedly the mage class of ME, yet compared to mages they are a boring one-trick-pony, and not for the lack of potential mind you,

more because of bad design.

 

Biotics were effective on their own merit in Mass Effect 2 and 3 though, you were just overly reliant on spamming combos and not 100% of your damage was coming from biotics.

 

No class in Mass Effect is the "mage class". All classes are expected to use firearms to augment ability damage, but some like Soldier rely more on guns than abilities while Adept relies more on abilities than guns.

 

If Adept was balanced around only ever using biotics as the benchmark for their damage output, they'd become overpowered the moment the player figured out they should pick up a half way decent gun and start firing it.

[Laughing_Man]

If Adept was balanced around only ever using biotics as the benchmark for their damage output, they'd become overpowered the moment the player figured out they should pick up a half way decent gun and start firing it.

 

Not necessarily. Soldiers and infiltrators have rather sizable bonuses to damage with firearms.

 

And the Adept will only use firearms if no other options are currently available - using a pistol instead of throwing another ball of dark energy should cause a drop in crowd control efficiency or DPS for an Adpet.

 

 

The Adept class is aimed at the mage archetype in all but name (scratch that, even the name sounds rather arcane...), I don't see why they don't simply take it a little bit further. It will certainly make gameplay more fun and varied between classes.

[capn233]

So essentially you think that less choice is a good thing?

 

Soldier class is practically a weapon-only class anyway. The fact that they made ammo into a "power" is irrelevant.

 

I would suggest creating different Biotic techniques for different purposes, some for pure damage, some for pure crowd control, some a mixture of both.

And yes, the ability to mostly rely on Biotics should be there as well.

 

That would be a misinterpretation of what I typed.  I said the game should reward players who combine the various elements of the game together in a coherent strategy.  To specifically address player choice, just because there is an option to do something doesn't mean it should be the most efficient way to approach every encounter in the game.  This is especially true if there is any specialization to powers, weapons, or even enemies in the game.

 

I would not hold the Soldier up as a paragon of game design in ME2 or ME3, and others have already made good threads asking how Soldier should probably be changed moving forward.

 

I agree that there should be distinct biotic powers, but of course people should be careful what they wish for.  ME2 Adept probably had the most distinction between the powers, and look at all the flak it gets.

 

Biotics were effective on their own merit in Mass Effect 2 and 3 though, you were just overly reliant on spamming combos and not 100% of your damage was coming from biotics.

 

No class in Mass Effect is the "mage class". All classes are expected to use firearms to augment ability damage, but some like Soldier rely more on guns than abilities while Adept relies more on abilities than guns.

 

If Adept was balanced around only ever using biotics as the benchmark for their damage output, they'd become overpowered the moment the player figured out they should pick up a half way decent gun and start firing it.

 

I never liked the argument that Adept is the mage class largely because tech is also essentially a "school of magic" in ME.  Especially by ME2 where Engineer may as well be a primal / elemental mage.

 

But the thoughts on biotics only is more or less what I was getting at.  It would be pretty difficult to balance a class that can get by on powers only if they also have the option to use their weapon.  Of course this is all still very relative.  ME1 is the only game of the series where I would flat out refuse the challenge of playing biotics only with no gun.  I don't know how many Throws it would take to kill a merc popping Immunity, and I don't want to be the person who finds that out.

[Cyonan]

Not necessarily. Soldiers and infiltrators have rather sizable bonuses to damage with firearms.

 

And the Adept will only use firearms if no other options are currently available - using a pistol instead of throwing another ball of dark energy should cause a drop in crowd control efficiency or DPS for an Adpet.

 

 

The Adept class is aimed at the mage archetype in all but name (scratch that, even the name sounds rather arcane...), I don't see why they don't simply take it a little bit further. It will certainly make gameplay more fun and varied between classes.

 

An Adept should already be using firearms only while waiting for the global cooldown of biotics, or when the target is next to dead and using an ability is a waste. The thing is that this is a rather significant percentage of combat.

 

What you seem to want is for biotic ability damage to be significantly increased, but that would require significant reworking to how things are set up so that the addition of using your firearm doesn't make the Adept overpowered.

 

and it would kill certain builds like the biotic gunner setup in ME3 that uses Reave + Warp Rounds with a heavier gun, because you would have to make guns almost entirely ineffective with Adepts in order to make what you want not overpowered.

 

I don't see any class in Mass Effect as a "mage class" because they're all designed to use their weapons in addition to their abilities, while typically a mage is designed almost entirely around using spells. If we want to argue semantics, I would call the Adept a Mage Knight class because of the weapon expectation that every class in Mass Effect has.

[Laughing_Man]

I agree that there should be distinct biotic powers, but of course people should be careful what they wish for.  ME2 Adept probably had the most distinction between the powers, and look at all the flak it gets.

 

 

 

I don't know how many Throws it would take to kill a merc popping Immunity, and I don't want to be the person who finds that out.

 

ME2 Adept gets flak because the reasons I mentioned above, there was a sudden drop overall in the effectiveness *and fun* of using Biotics.

 

Balance does not necessarily have to be the enemy of fun and weighty combat, I don't need to blow 50 enemies into red chunks like in an average DA2 encounter, but more weight effectiveness and variety for Biotic abilities would be appreciated.

 

 

As for your last query, I'm sure I've seen someone trying this on Youtube...

 

 

What you seem to want is for biotic ability damage to be significantly increased, but that would require significant reworking to how things are set up so that the addition of using your firearm doesn't make the Adept overpowered.

 

and it would kill certain builds like the biotic gunner setup in ME3 that uses Reave + Warp Rounds with a heavier gun, because you would have to make guns almost entirely ineffective with Adepts in order to make what you want not overpowered.

 

I don't see any class in Mass Effect as a "mage class" because they're all designed to use their weapons in addition to their abilities, while typically a mage is designed almost entirely around using spells. If we want to argue semantics, I would call the Adept a Mage Knight class because of the weapon expectation that every class in Mass Effect has.

 

I don't think a drastic change is needed, maybe give a bigger bonus to classes that rely on weapons more.

 

And builds that rely on warp rounds would still be valid, because warp rounds would give you a bonus to fire power, and in conjunction with a heavy weapon and Reave, you will still be able to do decent damage. Besides, if you want a gun-heavy tank class, just take soldier with incendiary rounds and fortification.

 

As for semantics, Vanguard is more like the mage-knight, not the adept.

 

And my point is that by making adept different (an actual caster class), you allow for more styles of play and provide more replay-ability value to the game.

[Cyonan]

I don't think a drastic change is needed, maybe give a bigger bonus to classes that rely on weapons more.

 

And builds that rely on warp rounds would still be valid, because warp rounds would give you a bonus to fire power, and in conjunction with a heavy weapon and Reave, you will still be able to do decent damage. Besides, if you want a gun-heavy tank class, just take soldier with incendiary rounds and fortification.

 

As for semantics, Vanguard is more like the mage-knight, not the adept.

 

And my point is that by making adept different (an actual caster class), you allow for more styles of play and provide more replay-ability value to the game.

 

Guns in general would have to be nerfed across the board and Adrenaline Rush/Tactical Cloak would need massive buffs because they're percentage based increases. You'd also have to give Vanguards a weapon damage bonus worth something.

 

Warp Rounds would cause a problem because a "caster" Adept could still pick it up and become overpowered by going all power damage everywhere else. Now you've got a 500% damage increase to your gun and you're doing amazing power damage too.

 

I don't want a gun heavy tank class. I want my Adept gunner that is perfectly viable in Mass Effect 3 and still relies heavily on powers, just in different ways from the Warp/Singularity->Throw BE spamming Adept and in different ways from a Vanguard.

 

The strength of Mass Effect's class system is that no class is actually trying to force you to be something. Adepts can be pure casters or use Warp Rounds to deal more weapon damage. Soldiers can go into a Concussive Shot build to be more power oriented rather than weapon platforms.

 

Nobody is confined into being a "caster" or a "weapon user". I don't see how doing that would add more choice to the game.

[Ahriman]

In ME 2, Biotics were "balanced" from their ME1 version to work only against red HP bars, and received shorter CD timers.

 

Unfortunately, this change seemed to have spilled the baby with the bathwater and made it so there would be no real reason to take much else once you had a primer and a detonator - throw and warp. Singularity is mostly useless, lift is very situational and is mostly useless, shockwave and slam are similar.

 

From the "fun" aspect of things, Biotics started to feel repetitive and useless.

 

Most enemies were almost dead once their HP bar became red, and at this point it's faster to just continue shooting than to use whatever biotic power to "finish them off". As a result, what you are left with most of the time is spamming warp and throw.

It's not like they couldn't balance it, they just didn't. Things were obviously wrapped around normal difficulty where biotic crowd smashing is still feaseable. I think the main problem is difficulty scaling and armor/shields tied to it. It's supposed to make you adapt your tactics, but in the end it just looks silly with armor protecting against gravity forces and shields neglecting hacking attacks. I'm not even talking about cerberus spec ops without shield and armored varrens.

BTW what's up with that rebranding, Apostrophe?

[Laughing_Man]

Guns in general would have to be nerfed across the board and Adrenaline Rush/Tactical Cloak would need massive buffs because they're percentage based increases. You'd also have to give Vanguards a weapon damage bonus worth something.

 

Warp Rounds would cause a problem because a "caster" Adept could still pick it up and become overpowered by going all power damage everywhere else. Now you've got a 500% damage increase to your gun and you're doing amazing power damage too.

 

I don't want a gun heavy tank class. I want my Adept gunner that is perfectly viable in Mass Effect 3 and still relies heavily on powers, just in different ways from the Warp/Singularity->Throw BE spamming Adept and in different ways from a Vanguard.

 

The strength of Mass Effect's class system is that no class is actually trying to force you to be something. Adepts can be pure casters or use Warp Rounds to deal more weapon damage. Soldiers can go into a Concussive Shot build to be more power oriented rather than weapon platforms.

 

Nobody is confined into being a "caster" or a "weapon user". I don't see how doing that would add more choice to the game.

 

You don't really need to "nerf" guns, just include an appropriate percentage bonus in the fitness / agent training of every class.

 

I guess warp rounds would need a slight reworking, and maybe the build you described could be a branch of Vanguard instead of Adept,

Vanguards are more about close range and weapons anyway, so it is kind of appropriate.

 

The point is, currently there is little difference between play styles of some classes, I want to see classes take certain aspects to the extreme instead of everyone being streamlined into a more-or-less samey gameplay. A soldier can be a tank in massive armor (like the destroyer from MP) that can shrug off massive amounts of fire, an adept a caster that can crowd control or throw high DPS, an Engineer can be a "summoner" class with drones and turrets and swarms of nanobots, etc.

 

 

...

 

BTW what's up with that rebranding, Apostrophe?

 

Got back into role playing Shadowrun recently, and this guy is rather iconic...

[Cyonan]

You don't really need to "nerf" guns, just include an appropriate percentage bonus in the fitness / agent training of every class.

 

I guess warp rounds would need a slight reworking, and maybe the build you described could be a branch of Vanguard instead of Adept,

Vanguards are more about close range and weapons anyway, so it is kind of appropriate.

 

The point is, currently there is little difference between play styles of some classes, I want to see classes take certain aspects to the extreme instead of everyone being streamlined into a more-or-less samey gameplay. A soldier can be a tank in massive armor (like the destroyer from MP) that can shrug off massive amounts of fire, an adept a caster that can crowd control or throw high DPS, an Engineer can be a "summoner" class with drones and turrets and swarms of nanobots, etc.

 

You'd have to either nerf guns or buff enemy health to compensate, which is functionally a nerf to guns. You'd also have to rework squad ammo evolution, and basically anything else that allows "caster" classes to get a weapon damage buff intended for a "weapons user".

 

You're still talking about taking away a build that is currently viable for my Adept which is being a half and half between biotic usage and gunnery. There is also the gunner Engineer that uses Cryo Blast to debuff enemies and takes AP Rounds from bonus power. The other option is to take Marksman as your bonus power, assuming you kept Ashley alive in Mass Effect 1 otherwise you get Barrier/Reave from Kaidan.

 

The gunner Adept, gunner Engineer, and Vanguard all have different playstyles which are again different from caster Adept and caster Engineer.

 

Right now as I see it there is plenty of variance in the classes. It seems to me you want to remove variance in playstyles within the classes to get your one specific vision for the class to be emphasized.

 

As I said, one of the strengths of Mass Effect is that all of the classes are distinct while not forcing you into a singluar playstyle for that class. The only exception is Sentinel which is basically just a tankish love child of the Adept and Engineer right now and could use some more uniqueness to the class. Especially if they intend to keep handing out armour abilities to everybody else.

[capn233]

ME2 Adept gets flak because the reasons I mentioned above, there was a sudden drop overall in the effectiveness *and fun* of using Biotics.

 

Balance does not necessarily have to be the enemy of fun and weighty combat, I don't need to blow 50 enemies into red chunks like in an average DA2 encounter, but more weight effectiveness and variety for Biotic abilities would be appreciated.

 

Fun is subjective so I won't argue that.

 

The idea that Adept or biotics in general were useless in ME2 is false, IMO.  Especially when ME1 is held up as the example of unlimited biotic power.  Sure, you can lift a Colossus in ME1 after you invest 12 points in Lift, but you haven't done any damage and you haven't improved the damage from other sources.  Sure you can Throw that protected merc, but he just hit Immunity and took like 1hp of damage despite falling off the giant cliff.

 

In ME2 a level 1 pull will lift any target on health regardless of rank.  When it is lifted you actually get to have a nice 100% additive damage bonus, which for guns is exactly the same as the bonus from Adrenaline Rush (all ranks except Heightened).  You still have a power to CC protected targets in Singularity.  You actually have a power that does real direct damage in Warp.  You actually have real AOE damage with Warp Explosions.  You can actually get through the game in a reasonable amount of time not firing a weapon as an Adept in ME2, that is not the case in ME1.

 

Now if we want to have an entirely separate discussion about whether all biotics should affect protected targets, that would require some sort of characterization of protections in MEA, the general number of enemies you will be facing with and without protections, and what the other classes are bringing to the table.  The ability of biotics to ragdoll all targets regardless of protection is overblown as a power metric without the context of the game.  If you could just flip a switch to allow this in ME3 with no other changes it would hardly affect the metagame in any meaningful way, for instance.

 

If I were king of Mass Effect, there would probably be a real "heavy" evolution that allowed some cc biotic powers to affect protected targets, and this would likely be opposed to any sort of AOE / radius evolution.  The game would have a radically different combo system and enemy composition compared to ME3 though.

[capn233]

The point is, currently there is little difference between play styles of some classes, I want to see classes take certain aspects to the extreme instead of everyone being streamlined into a more-or-less samey gameplay.

 

I agree that the distinction between classes was watered down in ME3.  But I don't think you should necessarily try to force power only or gun only on any of the classes.

[Laughing_Man]

I agree that the distinction between classes was watered down in ME3.  But I don't think you should necessarily try to force power only or gun only on any of the classes.

 

I don't see different classes having different strengths as "forced", sure, some classes will be outright better with guns and some specific builds may suffer, but over all you will get more play style options.

 

Want pure CC/DPS "caster"? You have Adept. "Summoner"/"Elemetalist"? Engineer. Semi-casters with gun training? Sentinel / Vanguard / Infiltrator variations.

 

The soldier would be either the "Heavy" with super-heavy armor that allows essentially tanking plus some related abilities, or a grenadier / commando with superb firearms training and grenades.

 

This way every class offers a unique perspective and gameplay.

 

Or I guess you could just get rid of classes entirely, and add different ability trees to specialize in, with appropriate requirements and restrictions to keep things relatively balanced.

 

As it is, it's neither here nor there.

[Cyonan]

I don't see different classes having different strengths as "forced", sure, some classes will be outright better with guns and some specific builds may suffer, but over all you will get more play style options.

 

Want pure CC/DPS "caster"? You have Adept. "Summoner"/"Elemetalist"? Engineer. Semi-casters with gun training? Sentinel / Vanguard / Infiltrator variations.

 

What I don't get is, if the classes can already do the things you're describing, how is this adding new playstyle options?

 

Want a pure CC/DPS Caster? Adept that specs into Singularity and Pull, picking up Stasis as a bonus power.

 

Want a "Summoner"? Engineer with Drone and Sentry Turret. Pick up Decoy for an added summon.

 

Want a semi-caster with guns? Basically every class in the game has their own variant of this right now. Adept, Engineer, and Sentinel all take AP or Warp Ammo bonus. Soldier/Infiltrator focus on Concussive Shot/Incinerate and take a bonus power that compliments that, and Vanguard basically does this right out of the gate.