903 réponses à ce sujet

[Gemini1179]

Haven't been reading this thread for a while, so this has probably already been mentioned, but to solve the 'left over skill points' issue, why not be able to continually gain xp, and hitting new xp thresholds grants 1 squad point, even though you don't "level up".



In ME2, it's 1000xp per level, which is fine IMO the way the game works, but after you hit lvl 30, why not grant SP's based on every next 5k xp or something.

[arberry01]

Great Job! You addressed all my concerns as well. I just hope the boys (and girls) at Bioware do not just see this as ****ing, but people who really like the game and want to see it improved. Bioware's created a wonderful universe to explore and flesh out. It'd be a shame to see it thrown on the woodpile after only three games. Think "Thieves World" guys, same universe other stories.

[Annihilator27]

Did this get unsticky recently?

[Gemini1179]

@above: It never really felt like it was properly stickied for any length of time.



Addendum to my above request: Purchase Squad Points with EEZO! You can retrain your powers and add a power with Eezo, why not have a "Prototype" that unlocks after lvl 30 requiring 25k (or something) eezo to purchase more Squad Points.

[Scarecrow_ES]

I wouldn't say, Poison, that it's a sense of entitlement. At least not for me. I played over 300 hours of the original Mass Effect. Multiple playthroughs in multiple classes and two level 60 characters. I enjoyed very much what BioWare gave me. Not everything was perfect, but it was the type of game I would gladly have purchased again if I had been given the chance to do it all over. I've been a great supporter of the game since it was released. It was me, and the many like me, that made Mass Effect the popular game it became.



Now, when BioWare made the sequel, they didn't make it for those of us that supported their first one. Not for all of us who bought it and loved it. No, they made it for those that hated the first one, or wished it was a different game. A series should grow from title to title. The developer should be free to expand and highlight features that work, fix features that don't, and infuse new features into the mix that take the series to the next level. I'm all for that. But sequels of a series are not really the place for instituting gameplay that radically alters the nature of a series. Noone seems to take too kindly to a Final Fantasy game that is all about button-mashing action and platforming. I doubt a Call of Duty card battle game would do very well either.



The thing I find remarkable is that so many people will look at a sequel that is essentially the same gameplay as the game it's following with myriad improvements and say that the game is not nearly as good because it doesn't differ greatly from the original. Take BioShock 2 for example... I loved the first, and booting up the sequel felt just like stepping back into a city I had grown to love. But reviewers all said "this all just feels too familiar." What's that supposed to mean? Shouldn't it feel familiar? I mean it's the same series that takes place in the same exact environment, and the one it's based on was only the game of the year nominee for just about every organization that comes up with one of those awards.



I can't imagine hearing a reviewer say "wow, this is just like the original Mass Effect, except everything that sucked is good now, and everything that was good is that much better. This is the worst day of my life." Yet, that seems to happen.

[Soruyao]

Scarecrow_ES wrote...
Now, when BioWare made the sequel, they didn't make it for those of us that supported their first one. Not for all of us who bought it and loved it. No, they made it for those that hated the first one, or wished it was a different game. A series should grow from title to title. The developer should be free to expand and highlight features that work, fix features that don't, and infuse new features into the mix that take the series to the next level. I'm all for that. But sequels of a series are not really the place for instituting gameplay that radically alters the nature of a series. Noone seems to take too kindly to a Final Fantasy game that is all about button-mashing action and platforming. I doubt a Call of Duty card battle game would do very well either.

I don't know if I'm just some strange anomaly or something, but I liked ME1 enough to put 150 hours into it.  I played all the classes and got a level 60 and generally enjoyed it.   I bought the game new when it first came out.   I went from being someone who'd never heard of bioware to someone who really appreciates them.

I liked almost every change they made for ME2.  It feels like they made a great game into an even better game.

Now, I have no idea how common people like me are.  Maybe I'm just a statistical outlier who played the heck out of the first game and still loved the second.  Maybe I speak for a huge swath of satisfied gamers who feel no need to come onto the forums at all, they're just happily playing the game.  I just wanted to point out that there is at least one of me.

(I wonder what it is that's different in the way that I've approached this game and the way the more dissatisfied players have.  I can't quite figure it out.)

Maybe bioware wasn't tailoring the game for you specifically, or the subset of gamers that you belong to, but who were they tailoring the game for exactly?  Professional reviewers?  FPS players who have no interest in the franchise or in RPGS?  Me specifically?   (Sometimes when I look at the forums it kind of seems like the game was made specifically to please me and two certain other people.)  Can the same game please all of these catagories of people at the same time?  I feel the question is one we should really examine.

For me, the heart of the game hasn't changed much, it just became less grindy.  When I'm playing my infiltrator, I feel like I'm playing a more powerful version of the same character I played in the first game in situations that are correspondingly more dangerous than the ones she survived in the first game.   That's a largely subjective feeling, but it's where I'm at.

[yuncas]

Bump because you know it's good. You can't deny it!

[Scarecrow_ES]

I think, Soruyao, that you are quite a bit in the minority. It's not to say out are an outlier, persay, just that you represent a certain group of people who perhaps like the essense of something more than the reality of it. Much of what made Mass Effect the gem in the rough that it was is entirely intact or even better in Mass Effect 2. The story driven narrative is there, the superior dialog and writing, the deep sci-fi universe with plausible scientific background... the Mass Effect Universe is very much alive and kicking in Mass Effect 2 in a way that eclipses what Mass Effect 1 didn't even come close to. But outside that, it's such a different game it's hard to believe the two are in the same series.



If a person were to describe the two games to you, leaving out any details of story, setting... sticking only to the fundementals of gameplay, you'd be describing two very different types of games - more so than I think many people realize. We tend to look at ME2 in the context of ME1 and draw those similarities, but taken on their own, they're remarkably different. Thinking about it now, I can draw greater parallels between ME2 and RE4 than I can to ME1.

[Poison_Berrie]

Soruyao wrote...
Now, I have no idea how common people like me are. 

Pretty common on this forum I would think. 
I like both as well and I've read quite a few posts that seem to suggest the same.

[Scarecrow_ES]

I certainly like both. I don't want to make it seems as though I think Mass Effect 2 is a rotten game. It's not... it certainly deserves to be rated in the high 9's out of 10. However, it's less a sequel in gameplay than an entirely new game with a storyline that piggy-backs on the original.

[RubiconI7]

Took me 15min to get through that.....my eyes hurt

But extremely well thought out. Hope BW sees this.

Maybe you should also talk about the slight lack of customization elements in the game. It is no clandestine that this game is a massive improvement from the previous, however, I still believe they should have kept some aspects of the original loot system.

Modifié par RubiconI7, 07 mars 2010 - 02:05 .

[Scarecrow_ES]

To be perfectly honest, I am quite pleased they got rid of the old system. What I'm not pleased about is that they really didn't put another system in its place to do the job. I've proposed a simple fix that would add some variety to individual weapons in a given category with meaningful stat differences and unique performance that would work with the current global upgrade system. It certainly adds the necessary number of individual weapons to provide true choice. Adding too many is overkill though, especially when the actual differences between those items is minimal, as was the case in ME1.



My system could stand alone and be quite satisfying for a large percentage of players, I think, or could serve as the basis for a new customization system if the devs want to implement one.

[Andaius20]

I'm the opposite on that matter, I would have loved to see them keep the same loot and weapon/armor Mods. However I do think that it needed tweaking not deletion. By simply making it less spammy, and removing the ten versions of everything and rebalancing the companies to have pro's and con's verses each other would have done wonders.



Like having 8 different guns a category with different stats and pro's and con's and different mod capabilities would have really been awesome. I pretty much have the same feeling on all there character changes too. While some are good other are retarded. Like the Ammo powers. They should have kept the mods and kept the gun abilities you get instead. (Carnage, Overkill. Marksmen.) again all that was needed was to do a little rebalancing to making them retain there old cool factor and not be stupidly Over powered in the new combat system.

[FataliTensei]

Scarecrow_ES wrote...

I wouldn't say, Poison, that it's a sense of entitlement. At least not for me. I played over 300 hours of the original Mass Effect. Multiple playthroughs in multiple classes and two level 60 characters. I enjoyed very much what BioWare gave me. Not everything was perfect, but it was the type of game I would gladly have purchased again if I had been given the chance to do it all over. I've been a great supporter of the game since it was released. It was me, and the many like me, that made Mass Effect the popular game it became.

Now, when BioWare made the sequel, they didn't make it for those of us that supported their first one. Not for all of us who bought it and loved it. No, they made it for those that hated the first one, or wished it was a different game. A series should grow from title to title. The developer should be free to expand and highlight features that work, fix features that don't, and infuse new features into the mix that take the series to the next level. I'm all for that. But sequels of a series are not really the place for instituting gameplay that radically alters the nature of a series. Noone seems to take too kindly to a Final Fantasy game that is all about button-mashing action and platforming. I doubt a Call of Duty card battle game would do very well either.

The thing I find remarkable is that so many people will look at a sequel that is essentially the same gameplay as the game it's following with myriad improvements and say that the game is not nearly as good because it doesn't differ greatly from the original. Take BioShock 2 for example... I loved the first, and booting up the sequel felt just like stepping back into a city I had grown to love. But reviewers all said "this all just feels too familiar." What's that supposed to mean? Shouldn't it feel familiar? I mean it's the same series that takes place in the same exact environment, and the one it's based on was only the game of the year nominee for just about every organization that comes up with one of those awards.

I can't imagine hearing a reviewer say "wow, this is just like the original Mass Effect, except everything that sucked is good now, and everything that was good is that much better. This is the worst day of my life." Yet, that seems to happen.

I agree with this completely

[fLoki]

FataliTensei wrote...

Scarecrow_ES wrote...

I wouldn't say, Poison, that it's a sense of entitlement. At least not for me. I played over 300 hours of the original Mass Effect. Multiple playthroughs in multiple classes and two level 60 characters. I enjoyed very much what BioWare gave me. Not everything was perfect, but it was the type of game I would gladly have purchased again if I had been given the chance to do it all over. I've been a great supporter of the game since it was released. It was me, and the many like me, that made Mass Effect the popular game it became.

Now, when BioWare made the sequel, they didn't make it for those of us that supported their first one. Not for all of us who bought it and loved it. No, they made it for those that hated the first one, or wished it was a different game. A series should grow from title to title. The developer should be free to expand and highlight features that work, fix features that don't, and infuse new features into the mix that take the series to the next level. I'm all for that. But sequels of a series are not really the place for instituting gameplay that radically alters the nature of a series. Noone seems to take too kindly to a Final Fantasy game that is all about button-mashing action and platforming. I doubt a Call of Duty card battle game would do very well either.

The thing I find remarkable is that so many people will look at a sequel that is essentially the same gameplay as the game it's following with myriad improvements and say that the game is not nearly as good because it doesn't differ greatly from the original. Take BioShock 2 for example... I loved the first, and booting up the sequel felt just like stepping back into a city I had grown to love. But reviewers all said "this all just feels too familiar." What's that supposed to mean? Shouldn't it feel familiar? I mean it's the same series that takes place in the same exact environment, and the one it's based on was only the game of the year nominee for just about every organization that comes up with one of those awards.

I can't imagine hearing a reviewer say "wow, this is just like the original Mass Effect, except everything that sucked is good now, and everything that was good is that much better. This is the worst day of my life." Yet, that seems to happen.

I agree with this completely

Indeed i too, so very much agree..

[Andaius20]

I totally agree with that too. Just look at what happened with FO3....

[Soruyao]

I'm not gonna lie, half of why I'm posting this is to bump this awesome topic, but I do think this post raised some interesting questions.

Scarecrow_ES wrote...

I think, Soruyao, that you are quite a bit in the minority. It's not to say out are an outlier, persay, just that you represent a certain group of people who perhaps like the essense of something more than the reality of it.

This is a very interesting and thought provoking comment and in one sense I absolutely agree, and in another sense I find it very strange.  I do agree that I look at the essence of both the story and the gameplay, however, I would say that this essence is as much part of the reality of what's there as anything else.   This sounds like philosophical mumbo jumbo, but I'll elaborate so it makes more sense.

Much of what made Mass Effect the gem in the rough that it was is entirely intact or even better in Mass Effect 2. The story driven narrative is there, the superior dialog and writing, the deep sci-fi universe with plausible scientific background... the Mass Effect Universe is very much alive and kicking in Mass Effect 2 in a way that eclipses what Mass Effect 1 didn't even come close to. But outside that, it's such a different game it's hard to believe the two are in the same series.

What you say about the story, I completely agree.  The essence of what made ME1's story is here too.  I feel that there's even more of it.   Everything that happens to your character really impacts them and makes it easy to get sucked in and feel like you're in their shoes, saving the galaxy.  The ambiguous moral decisions are even scarier and more ambiguous.  Having people in your team die is much more cutting because they put more into writing the characters well and because they didn't die at the result of virmire-like simple choices.

For me, the essence of the story was to take control of shepard's story and feel their happiness and pain as they fight to save the universe.  I think you and I both agree this is strong in ME2.   However, I feel that the essence of ME1's combat is here too.

If a person were to describe the two games to you, leaving out any details of story, setting... sticking only to the fundementals of gameplay, you'd be describing two very different types of games - more so than I think many people realize. We tend to look at ME2 in the context of ME1 and draw those similarities, but taken on their own, they're remarkably different. Thinking about it now, I can draw greater parallels between ME2 and RE4 than I can to ME1.

Here's where I disagree.  I think the essence of combat at the very least is here, with some things added that make it a little more complex.   There was not a lot going on gameplaywise during combat, on any difficulty.   (I'm not talking about inventory or stuff, just the nitty gritty of actually killing things.)  On every class, combat pretty much consisted of going into a room, popping all your cooldowns indescriminately, and holding the trigger and aiming in the general direction of enemies until they all fell down.   If I just described ME1 combat by the reality of what you do in combat, it would sound incredibly dull.

What made combat for me, and made me willing to keep coming back to the game, was taking the way each class did what they did and focusing on that.

For instance, I think the essence of an adept was making people float and shooting them while they're helpless, or lifting them up and throwing them off of things.  As long  as I can do both of these things and do these often, I will probably enjoy a class.   In ME1, those two things were literally all I ever had to do or think about.   I was able to do those two things over and over again for an entire game and enjoy it becuase I was treating it like roleplay.  I was trying to learn about my character and what she was like through the way they fight.

In ME2, making people float and shooting them are still here, however on the hardest difficulty now there's a lot of other things I need to think about.   Cover existed in ME1, but I never seemed to take enough damage to need it, so it practically didn't exist.   Now I take damage, and the cover exists as a part of the room that matters.   I need a little help taking down defenses so I can commence with the throwing, so now my squadmates actually exist.   In ME1, in most situations I had a single ability called "Singularitywarpliftthrowmarksman."  In ME2, the global cooldown forces me to make decisions about which ability to use, so in a sense, my abilities exist as separate entities now.

Marksman and a frictionless materials meant that I would never come close to overheating.  My gun was just a trigger I hold and aim at helpless targets.  In ME2, ammunition forces me to pay attention to how much and when I'm shooting.  In this sense, my gun exists as a gameplay entity.   The fact that I can run out (and the rock paper scissors setup) makes my entire arsenal exist as well.   (Until I got an AR, which had too much ammo, so I ended up in the hold trigger: kill enemy rut again.)

I could make a similar comparison for the rest of the classes, but what I'm trying to say is that (concerning combat) there is more game here.  ME1 combat was incredibly simple and while it was fun for awhile, it would have made for a pretty weak game if it stood alone from the story.  ME2's combat is more complex, and I would hazard to call it more sophisticated. In any insanity combat scenario there are at least 5 or 6 more "things" that I need to think about and use with in order to succeed.   For me, this makes for a game I can spend more time on without getting bored.  

I feel like ME1's combat was a bowl of chocolate frosting.  It's sweet and a little fun, but it's not very complicated and if you sit there eating it with a spoon for an hour, eventually you can't really stand chocolate frosting anymore.   ME2 feels more like an actual cake. It has some layers and complexity.  Some people would rather just have the frosting, and they didn't mind because it was a decent dessert after the main course that was the the story.  Or maybe they don't like the flavor of the cake that we ended up with.   I like cake.  Did I belabor this analogy enough?

I think that a lot of people liked the fact that the combat was simple in ME1 because they didn't want more things to think about during combat.  They wanted complexity in the menus and inventories and not complexity in the actual combat.  I think a lot of people got a little bit spoiled by a difficulty system that didn't actually increase difficulty, as well.  Insanity mode was not for the insane, it was for the patient, and people who want to learn how to avoid snipers and rockets.

---
This isn't really related, but you mention resident evil 5, and there are a couple of these "things" that exist in both games. (Mostly just the ammunition management, really.)  However, I feel that the only two "essences" of what makes combat in the entire resident evil franchise are inventory management and evasion.  You manage the ammo and guns and healing items you have, and you run away from monsters while you shoot them.   They never (or rarely at least) shoot at you, so cover doesn't exist. You don't have any powers so that doesn't exist.  You spend half your time looting corpses and half your time backpedaling around an area and shooting wildly.    (The difference between 1-3 and 4-5 is that you and enemies move faster, and locational damage comes into existence.)

Modifié par Soruyao, 09 mars 2010 - 01:32 .

[Andaius20]

Marksman and a frictionless materials meant that I would never come close to overheating. My gun was just a trigger I hold and aim at helpless targets.

Thats is a choice you actively make though, I never found a need to add Frictionless to the more advanced guns. I opted for rails and optics. I generally feel that ME 1 's combat let you approach combat the way you wanted to. Use cover and shot it out ME 2 whack a mole style, run and gun, or hit and run killing a few at a time. Now in ME 2 your in a corridor and can only move in one direction. Your forced to use cover at all times or die. Me 2's combat is more ridged. While I do like the stuff like the defense system I don't like the rest of the change shift.

[Soruyao]

Andaius20 wrote...

Marksman and a frictionless materials meant that I would never come close to overheating. My gun was just a trigger I hold and aim at helpless targets.

Thats is a choice you actively make though, I never found a need to add Frictionless to the more advanced guns. I opted for rails and optics. I generally feel that ME 1 's combat let you approach combat the way you wanted to. Use cover and shot it out ME 2 whack a mole style, run and gun, or hit and run killing a few at a time. Now in ME 2 your in a corridor and can only move in one direction. Your forced to use cover at all times or die. Me 2's combat is more ridged. While I do like the stuff like the defense system I don't like the rest of the change shift.

Actually, with marksman and one of those first aid armor sockets you could have yourself never overheating as well.  Even without anything like that, as long as you didn't put in explosive ammo,  if you had one of the more advanced guns, you would rarely overheat.  (Unless you got hit by sabotague.  That was the most irritating thing in the entire game.)

There were a lot of choices you could actively make in ME1.  Whether or not to use cover, whether or not to use anything other than frictionless, whether to use your squadmate's abilities.  These were all choices that you could make because the difficulty was so brokenly easily that it almost never mattered if you made a choice that would make you weaker because you would always succeed anyway.  The game's combat difficulty was broken and it made almost all your choices completely hollow.

Basically, there were a lot of things in ME1 that most people ignored because the difficulty setting didn't change the difficulty.  You could play in almost any way you wanted and succeed.  You almost never had to learn from the game, so you could impose a large amount of your own personal combat preference on the way the game played. In ME2, harder difficulties are actually harder.   The harder a game is, the more the game imposes it's rules upon you.  It's part of the nature of difficulty.   When you crank up the difficulty in a game, you are telling the game you want to make it's rules more stringent to impose a challenge on you and allow you to learn and improve within that ruleset.

What you get from this is a system where a bunch of different combat mechanics that you could ignore before begin to matter.  Ammo, cover, defenses, powers, etc. You learn to work with the system, or you die.  I personally like this because it feels like I'm making progress as a player, and I feel like my shepard is actually facing a credible threat.   The lower you set the difficulty, the more out-there strategies you can impose on the system.    I could be a run and gun shotgun adept on casual and possibly normal mode, but this is almost entirely impossible on insanity.  (I tried this.   :x)

This happens in almost every game with difficulty settings, but it didn't happen in ME1, and I think people were expecting it to.   Normal mode  (and of course casual mode) has -much- more leniency in this regard.  You can run around with snipers and shotguns and almost never run out of ammo, almost every enemy can be killed with biotics/tech right off the bat, you can use the wrong weapon type against defenses and still kill things easily, etc.  I do not understand why the people who want more freedom simply don't lower their difficulty until their strategy of choice is as effective as they would like it to be.  (I think the fact that insanity is an achievement is part of the problem.)

---

I want to add that my only disagreements with the changes put forth in this thread are combat related.  I agree that the inventory (or at least weapon/gear/item management) could be more complex and interesting.  I agree that planet scanning can be annoying, and I do agree that a few tweaks to the combat system are warranted.   I just think they need to be tweaks and not a complete overhaul.

Modifié par Soruyao, 09 mars 2010 - 01:38 .

[Andaius20]

Basically, there were a lot of things in ME1 that most people ignored because the difficulty setting didn't change the difficulty. You could play in almost any way you wanted and succeed. You almost never had to learn from the game, so you could impose a large amount of your own personal combat preference on the way the game played. In ME2, harder difficulties are actually harder. The harder a game is, the more the game imposes it's rules upon you. It's part of the nature of difficulty. When you crank up the difficulty in a game, you are telling the game you want to make it's rules more stringent to impose a challenge on you and allow you to learn and improve within that ruleset.

I agree with the difficulty thing, I did hardcore my very first ME 1 run and insanity right after in a new game + and wasn't hard since I had spectre V gear. However I disagree with the thought that ME 2 combat gets "stricter" it never changes at least for me. I still had to use cover or die. you'd just die much much faster the higher you went. It was just a matter of time. You have no tactical options as it where. You MUST use x power on y defense while under cover or be killed in 2 seconds. Lesser difficulty it was you Must use x power on why defense or die in 10 seconds. With the option of Shooting with X gun thats good against Y defense instead.



All the lower difficulties did was give you ever more time to use before death. So inefficient tactics had more leeway.



For me the Marksmen skill was used in the same fashion as the Tempest is used now in ME 2 short range SMG.

[Scarecrow_ES]

Like I said, ME2 does make some serious improvements to the things that made the original Mass Effect unique in a sea of RPGs. On the whole, it's a better game overall. However, when it comes to gameplay, it's a very different experience than the first. At the end of each game, you have a feeling that you've experienced something that you'll find quite in common with the other, but the manner you reached that conclusion is largely different. As I said previously, if we take a serious look at each game without using the other to draw context, they're really VERY different games that happen to have some of the same basic gameplay features to allow them to be put in relatively the same genre.



It's one thing to like the essense of something. The essense of both games is largely the same... but the reality of them - that path you take to get from point A to point B - those are very different. And that's why, I think, discussions like these can be so very polarizing. I can agree that the ammo system doesn't 100% suck. As I've always said, the new system fixes some serious deficiencies of the old heat system. But for every good thing the new system does that the old system didn't, it's traded something the old system did well to get. In the end, you've got a system that is no more perfect than the old one.



Unfortunately, I don't believe that tweaking the new system to correct for problems is possible. If all weapons the player had access to were of the same category, such as all assault rifles or other forms of automatic weapons, I would say it'd be very easy to get solution with just tweaks. But with the different weapons categories, it's not possible. In a traditional shooter like CoD, having all weapons with ammo and whatnot works fine. You're going to be presented with situations for which an assault rifle or a sniper rifle is best, and the gameplay will give you certain advantages or disadvantages in using either, so ammo limitations aren't necessary. When have you ever played a traditional shooter where you could only cary 10 rounds of sniper ammo? However, if you could walk into a battle with dozens of rounds of sniper ammo in the ME universe, with no limitation on how you could send those down range, what would be the point of using any other weapon at all. There's no limiting factor in an ammo system other than the ammo amount.

[Soruyao]

Scarecrow_ES wrote...

Like I said, ME2 does make some serious improvements to the things that made the original Mass Effect unique in a sea of RPGs. On the whole, it's a better game overall. However, when it comes to gameplay, it's a very different experience than the first. At the end of each game, you have a feeling that you've experienced something that you'll find quite in common with the other, but the manner you reached that conclusion is largely different. As I said previously, if we take a serious look at each game without using the other to draw context, they're really VERY different games that happen to have some of the same basic gameplay features to allow them to be put in relatively the same genre.

It's one thing to like the essense of something. The essense of both games is largely the same... but the reality of them - that path you take to get from point A to point B - those are very different. And that's why, I think, discussions like these can be so very polarizing. I can agree that the ammo system doesn't 100% suck. As I've always said, the new system fixes some serious deficiencies of the old heat system. But for every good thing the new system does that the old system didn't, it's traded something the old system did well to get. In the end, you've got a system that is no more perfect than the old one.

I agree with you that the gameplay is different.  I used an analogy about having a bowl of frosting or having a cake.   I feel like a bunch of stuff has been added to what existed before that make it into something with a little more form and substance.  Of course, I'm just talking about the combat.  Inventory went through the opposite sort of change.   (Except, I didn't like the inventory cake much.  It was coffee flavored and it was a little bit stale.)  God, this analogy is making me hungry.

Anyway, so here's one of the major things I don't exactly understand.   What exactly did the overheat system do so well?  It was novel and science fictiony feeling, and it had a lot of thought put into the way it worked.  I get that much, and it makes sense thematically.   Gameplaywise however, I'm drawing a blank.   It can't just be novelty, because that wears off relatively quickly.   I thought it was because you could socket in a frictionless and give yourself unlimited firing, but everyone I've talked to who liked the old system said they didn't do that.  (One insinuated I lacked imagination for doing so, even.)

So assuming that the people who liked it opted out of frictionless materials, was it just the fact that you could use one weapon for the entire game and never worry about running out of a resource, or is there something else I'm not understanding?

In the same vein, here's a list of the things I like about the ammo system:

1. The main thing I like about the ammo system is that it makes it easier for the devs to give me a really powerful weapon without breaking the difficulty.  In my mind, the low ammo capacity of sniper rifles is directly tied to their incredible killing power.   I can't possibly imagine a sniper rifle with infinite ammo staying as powerful as the ones we have now.    (I'd rather have a sniper rifle that can only fire a few times but have those shots "cut 'er like butter!" Than have one that can fire indefinitely and takes a bunch of shots to kill anything.)
2. I also like the fact that it makes combat a little more complex.   I like that there are a few different things to think about in combat in order to be effective.  It's kind of like how poker is a more intellectually stimulating game than go fish.  You might play go fish for awhile and have fun, but you're not likely to devote your life to it the way some people do.
3. It makes me more likely to use weapons I might not normally use, and in doing so it helps me discover other ways in which those weapons are tactical.  For instance: I probably would never have realized how amazing cryo ammo on an SMG can be if I had infinite ammo with the sniper rifle, since I never would have switched away from it.   In a sense, it gives me little pushes towards a more varied playstyle which is more rewarding to succeed with.  (I personally think so at least.)
4. There's something satisfying about picking up thermal clips.   Something about the way the sound they make when I pick them up, the way a pile of them glints, and the reinforcement I get from knowing I can clear an entire room with the clips I just picked up really feels good.  It's like finding a pile of candy on the floor.   

Unfortunately, I don't believe that tweaking the new system to correct for problems is possible. If all weapons the player had access to were of the same category, such as all assault rifles or other forms of automatic weapons, I would say it'd be very easy to get solution with just tweaks. But with the different weapons categories, it's not possible. In a traditional shooter like CoD, having all weapons with ammo and whatnot works fine. You're going to be presented with situations for which an assault rifle or a sniper rifle is best, and the gameplay will give you certain advantages or disadvantages in using either, so ammo limitations aren't necessary. When have you ever played a traditional shooter where you could only cary 10 rounds of sniper ammo? However, if you could walk into a battle with dozens of rounds of sniper ammo in the ME universe, with no limitation on how you could send those down range, what would be the point of using any other weapon at all. There's no limiting factor in an ammo system other than the ammo amount.

I agree that with the sniper rifle as powerful as it is, nobody would ever want to use anything else. It has been allowed to become this powerful because it is balanced with it's low ammo capacity. The threat of running out of ammo is a knob that devs can turn to tweak a gun, and potentially to tweak game difficulty.   In a system with infinite ammo, the sniper rifle would have to either have it's power balanced with something else (I have no idea what), or it would have to be heavily weakened.    It'll probably have to be weaker than other guns too, since they would have to balance around the fact that you can get headshots at a distance and generally be safer.  Though, hopefully we'd never return to sniping a krogan 30 times to kill it.  :3

I still think the best solution to this and any other situation in which someone is complaining that their particular playstyle is not effective (whether we go back to the old system or not) is to ramp up the bonus powers to the point where they change your gameplay experience significantly.  There would be one that generates ammo in some way, one that lets your powers have slightly more effect on defended targets.   There would be one for people who like how it is now that makes their melee do something interesting.   You would have to choose the one thing you want to change about combat the most, and then pick the power that addresses that specific gripe.

I think the system we have now worked very well for the general populace.  It worked well for the game reviewers, and it works well for new players to the game who might have more experience with regular shooters.   I think it's got some extra knobs to turn to change difficulty and balance weapons and skills that didn't exist previously, which gives devs an easier time creating content.  (Maybe!  I'm a laymen, so that last part is just guesswork.)  I think it would be much easier (in developer effort and time) to add powers that address specific issues specific players have with the system than to revamp the entire system.

Modifié par Soruyao, 09 mars 2010 - 10:58 .

[SurfaceBeneath]

If I can backtrack a bit, I very much do not think Bioware made ME2 for those who hated ME1. They made it for those who liked ME1, but thought that it had serious gameplay problems, which it did. Notice that most every critical game review of Mass Effect 2 begins with a comparison to the first, and usually it's a comparison like, "The first ME1 was a great RPG that had problems... ME2 corrects those issues". As example, notice how IGN actually did list the first Mass Effect as the number 1 game to own on Xbox 360 a while back. When ME2 came out, they gave it a higher review and commented on how well it fixed the problems the first game had. The game is often referred to as a "Flawed Gem" and in ME2, Bioware sought to modify their traditional approach to RPGs in order to rectify the "Flawed" part of that description.

I, personally, do not hate Mass Effect, but it is quite obvious that Bioware did not have the hang of the Shooter element of it yet. Of course the RPG elements were strong... it was basically a copy of the RPG elements Bioware has been doing some Baldur's Gate. But that formula was not suited for the kind of actiony shooter game Bioware had envisioned for Mass Effect, so they decided to change their traditional systems for something more adventurous in the greater scheme of Roleplaying games.

Modifié par SurfaceBeneath, 09 mars 2010 - 12:02 .

[Scarecrow_ES]

I'll start with Surface, since his post was smaller...



The reality is not that ME2 corrects problems that ME1 had... GameInformer put it best... BioWare didn't fix the things that were considered wrong in ME1, it got rid of them entirely.



Thought the Mako controls were clunky? No more Mako. Thought managing weapon heat left you out in the cold if you fired your assault rifle too much? Here's an ammo system instead. Used all your powers all at once and now you're stuck waiting for a recharge? Now you can have a fast global cooldown instead. Thought managing different types of weapons, armors, and augmentations was a hassle? Then you take what we give you. Didn't like having to wade through a lot of player customization options? Now your character is basically the same as everyone else's. Didn't like playing a shooter/rpg hybrid where the shooter elements weren't as good as the rpg elements? Fine, let's just get rid of all the RPG stuff and just go with shooter.



Yeah, ME2 is the better technical achievement, and certainly everything that made ME1 unique in the RPG world is intact and improved this time around. But the substance of the game - all that stff you do between all the amazing ME moments... you know, the actual game... not nearly as good. You really have to remark at just how much LESS game there is here. And while the game is still fresh and most players haven't even gotten to a second playthrough yet, you don't tend to notice those things... be over time, I think more people will realize just how ME2 doesn't really improve anything in ME outside the hallmark stuff.