Been meaning to reply to this topic for a while, but never really found time to properly compose my thoughts. Let me preface this by saying that I love Mass Effect 1, and I love Mass Effect 2 even more. ME2 has its share of issues, but by and large, I feel it is an improvement over ME1. I like the direction Bioware went with ME2. I always though Mass Effect was supposed to be a tactical shooter/RPG hybrid and I thought ME2 was on the whole closer to that vision, despite ditching a lot of RPG elements. My main hope for ME3 is that it will bring back some of the RPG elements, but not at the expense of the intense shooter combat that made ME2 so great. So, some suggestions:
WeaponsWhat ME2 did:
1. ME2 made every weapon feel different. For example, you had a burst fire machine pistol and a fully automatic SMG within the SMG category. This is good! It makes weapon selection more interesting that simply comparing the numbers for damage, accuracy, and shots before overheat of tons of weapons that all feel exactly the same when you get right down to it. At least in theory. This goal is hindered by weapons you acquire later in the game being "upgrades" to weapons you get at the beginning. I haven't read or crunched numbers to see if the fully auto SMG is actually better than the machine pistol, but the game says in the SMG's description that it is an "upgrade" to the machine pistol. And that's all that really matters since the majority of players are not going to crunch the numbers. If the game tells you that one weapon is better than another, most people are going to use the one the game tells them to. As a result, weapon selection actually becomes very uninteresting because you just pick the "best" weapon of each type and there's no incentive to choose the weapon whose feel you like the best.
2. The resists system combined with the removal of talents associated with specific weapons made using weapons both interesting and necesary. This was great and I have no complaints about this (but I'm mentioning it because I'll reference it later).
What I'd like to see for ME3:
1. Make the weapons balanced. The machine pistol should be equally effective as the SMG. Then it's up to the player whether they like the burst fire or the fully automatic style. Likewise, the various kinds of pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, and assault rifles should all be balanced within their respective weapon types. Balancing shotguns and pistols is still important, but not as important as balancing each of the pistols with each other and each of the shotguns with each other. Pistols and shotguns as a whole just need to be balanced enough that one isn't overhwhelmingly better than the other. The resists system will take care of the rest and ensure that each weapon is used in it's proper situation.
2. The first part of the solution presents a problem though: it makes the game even more like a shooter. In a game like Call of Duty, the weapons are all roughly balanced (or at least they're supposed to be...Model 1887 akimbo, I'm looking at you...but I digress), and even if you get a weapon later in the campaign or later in the multiplayer ranking system, it's not automatically your new best weapon. It's just one more option with a different feel that you may like better or worse than what you already have. Mass Effect, however, is a shooter/RPG hybrid, and as I said at the beginning, the goal of these changes is to bring back some of the RPG elements, and RPGs need progression in gear. Weapons you get later in the game should be better than weapons you get early in the game. How can we reconcile this with balancing all the weapons?
Bring back weapon ranks. To illustrate by continuing the SMG example:
You start the game with Machine Pistol I. A bit later in the game you find Fully Auto SMG I. They are both equally powerful and now you can choose which one you want to use.
You keep playing, and eventually you find Fully Auto SMG II. This weapon is identical in feel to the first SMG, it's just better, just like the HMWP X is the same but better than the HMWP VII in ME1. A little later, you find Machine Pistol II. Again, this is like the first machine pistol, but better. Now you again get to choose which weapon you like the feel of better.
10 ranks of weapons is probably a little much for this type of system. I'd say five is a better number. The ranks can be more interesting than just straight damage increases too. Maybe at rank III, all weapons get bigger clips but no damage increase.
Now, you can and should still have the weapon upgrade research system from ME2. So in addition to finding new physical weapons of a higer rank out in the world, you also research damage increases and all that good stuff on the Normandy and these upgrades apply to all of your weapons regardless of rank. And for balance reasons, you probably get an increase to your weapon damage with every character level and every rank of the class passive ability for the soldier, vanguard, and infiltrator. But upgrading for a rank I ro a rank II weapon should still feel like a significant difference, and I leave it up to Bioware to ge the tuning just right.
You can also introduce weapon types later in the game and have them start at higher ranks. So if you want to make a third type of SMG with a distinct feel from the other two, but you don't want to have this weapon be available until over halfway through the game, you could have the lowest rank you can find of this weapon be rank III. And you know immediately when you pick it up that it's going to be balanced against the other rank III SMGs.
In conclusion, this system will make weapon selection more interesting while also bring back some of the gear progression common to RPGs. It also leads right into the next point, which is...
LootME2 doesn't really have loot. RPG gamers love loot. The weapon rank system lends itself to a much better loot system. Some ranks of weapons could be bought in stores. Some could be found lying around in the world, as weapons are in ME2. But some could also drop from enemies. I like that ME1 automatically put loot into your inventory as you killed people, so you didn't have to go hunting for bodies to search. If you do loot like this in ME3 though, make it obvious that you got a new weapon. Like, pop up a box in the bottom right corner of the screen like the one in ME2, and have it say something like, "Enemy dropped Battle Rifle IV!" Either that, or make weapons dropped to the ground very obvious like in Borderlands, where they glow and the name and stats appear over them. This brings back the feeling of excitement you get when an enemy drops a new piece of gear for you that is unique to RPGs.
However, an expanded loot system needs to be balanced against the needs of the game's economy. ME3 should NOT have an economy like ME1, where you started out too poor to even afford medigel and grenade upgrades as they became available, but by the end of the had 9,999,999 credits constantly, were selling items for nothing just to make space, and had nothing to spend your money on. This situation came about both because there were not many things worth buying in ME1 and because there were soooo many guns and armors that would drop and 95% of them were sold without even being used because they weren't upgrades. ME2, by contrast, had a great economy, which was well balanced in how it gave you a steady stream of cash throughout the adventure and you always had interesting things to spend your credits on. You always felt like you needed more cash than you had because there were always more things available than you had credits for, so you had to make choices. But the economy was balanced such that if you did every mission, you had enough money to eventually buy everything. Bravo.
In ME3, I think the best system, though it will be controversial, will be for you to not sell weapons and armor. Enemies drop weapons, but you don't accumulate four Battle Rifle IVs, sell off three of them, and keep one for yourself. Once an enemy drops Battle Rifle IV for you, you don't see it again, and it is available for all of your squad members to use.
OK, the rest of these sections will be shorter, I promise.
LevelingI hope ME3 imports your character level and increases the level cap to 60. To help bring lower level characters up to speed, there need to be some tweaks to experience up to level 30 though. If a character finishes ME2 below level 20 (don't know if it's even possible to do that, much less have Shepard survive the suicide mission though), they are automatically advanced to level 20. Levels 21-25 are very, very fast in ME3, so that anyone who starts ME3 below level 25 will be at least level 25 within the first hour of ME3. Levels 26-30 will be slower, but still faster in terms of hours of play that gaining the eqivalent levels in ME2 would have been. Levels 31-40 will be at about the same pace as levels 21-30 in ME2. Levels 41-50 will be slower. Levels 51-55 will be slower still. And levels 56-60 will be really slow like in ME1, possibly requiring New Game+ to achieve level 60. For those wondering, yes, this system takes inspiration from what Blizzard does with each new WoW expansion: the amount of experience required to gain the lower levels is decreased to bring new players up to speed faster.
AbilitiesOf couse, with more levels comes more skill points and ME3 will need more abilities so that you don't have a character that just maxes out all his ME2 abilties and calls it a day in ME3. I liked the shared cooldown system for abilties in ME2. It forced Bioware to really balance all of the abilities and make them all useful in different situations, and for the most part, I think they succeeded. New abilities added in ME3 should follow the same rule: useful in different situations, but not replacing your current abilities. For example, biotics could get an ability that is useful against shields and techs could get an ability useful against barriers. Adding more abilities will also naturally fix ME2's problem feeling like you had less abilties than in ME1, even though in ME2 almost all or all of yours were useful, unlike in ME1. Squad members also definitely need more abilties in ME2.
Armor CustomizationI liked the customization options of the N7 armor in ME2. The stats on each piece were more interesting than just increased Damage Protection, Tech/Biotic Protection, and Shields like in ME1. Different sets of customizable armor would be awesome in ME3. For example, you'd have an N7 armor with a bunch of different pieces you could choose from. Or you could choose to use Cerberus armor, which would have its own selection of pieces to pick and choose from. But you could not wear, say, a pair of N7 legplates with a Cerberus chestpiece because that would just look silly. It's been said a million times before, but hiding the helmet like in ME1 would be awesome, even if it's just in dialogue and cutscenes like in Dragon Age. Finally, more customization of squad members armor would be awesome too. I like that each squad member had its own unique look in ME1, as opposed to Liara's and Ashley's armor looking the same in ME1. For the squad members, maybe only have one "set," but have customizable pieces for each set like Shepards N7 set. That way each squad member still has their unique look, while still allowing you to customize them to a greater degree. Also, every squad member needs a helmet and sealed version of their suit for vacuum and inhospitable alien environments.
Other Brief Points-A new resource gathering mechanic. Searching random worlds with the Mako was terrible. Scanning is less annoying for me, but still bad. I don't know what the answer is, but something has to be done.
-Bigger hubs (read: Citadel in particular) with more to do in them. More quests like the Chora's Den raid and the Noveria investigation that transition seamlessly from exploring the hub area and talking with people to combat.
-More squad banter like in Dragon Age. ME1 had it in the elevators sometimes, ME2 had only a little bit. More all around would be great in ME3.
-Cover system was much improved in ME2, but not perfect. There are sometimes issues with leaning around the left side of cover.
-All living, loyal ME1 and ME2 squad members are recruitable in ME3, with some exceptions, such as Samara making good on her threat that she would be forced to try to kill a Renegade Shepard after the mission is over, regardless of whether she's loyal or not.
-Suicide mission-style endgame, with every character playing a role. Could even have you controlling some of your squad members directly like you did when you were defending the city gates at the end of Dragon Age. I feel ME2 opened the door to this for ME3 with the terrific sequence where you controlled Joker.
-Tali's face.
Thanks for reading!
Modifié par Frigid Leaf, 14 mars 2010 - 10:10 .
Ce sujet est fermé
(((
(that is of course, just my opinion)
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