10273 réponses à ce sujet

[Ecael]

bjdbwea wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

This isnt the fault of console controls or hardware.
Oblivion doesnt have random loot on the console and it wasnt forced in the inventory of the player.

Fair enough, but these dumbed down inventory systems started with JE, BioWare's first console RPG. It has to have something to do with the inferior input system, or the limited hardware of the consoles. Or is it the audience? But as you said, Oblivion had a proper inventory, Fallout 3 too. They even presented a proper combination of RPG and action combat. And both apparently sold well on consoles too, plus the DLCs were successful too. So if there's a significant number of console players who can appreciate proper RPG elements and combat beyond pew-pew, then why did BioWare/EA feel the need to dumb the game down so much in the first place?

I wouldn't call it dumbed down, as they just shifted every useful weapon and armor mod to the upgrade terminal. It simplifies things by a ton and doesn't leave much choice to the player, but it's still progression in a different form.

I agree that the console may have limited the kinds of control options that we are familiar with in PC RPGs, however.

[Terror_K]

uberdowzen wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

Helena Blake.Toombs.Doctor Kyle.Bringing Down the Sky.The biotics that capture the politician.

The crazy biotic that murders the whole crew of one ship.

Missed. The. Point. I was just pointing out that saying that the tone of ME2 was ruined by having emails is ridculous because many of the UCWs were told with text boxes.

Some of them were, but aside from the trinket you get from Sha'ira pretty much all of these were cases of giving you simple information about something you'd found. And they were still a minority compared to the amount of UNC quests that had proper dialogue, set-up and involved interesting characters. This is opposed to the N7 missions all of which have none of this.

[tonnactus]

Ecael wrote...


Except Ashley and Wrex will always have Immunity and/or Barrier, and the game gets easier as Energized Plating and the last level of Tungsten/Shredder Ammo starts dropping.

Mass Effect 1 and 2 are both easy after the first playthrough.

Ashley is useless on insanity(early on she didnt have immunity and later a good biotic is better anyway) and enemy krogan often ignores teammates when they charge.Even with light colossus and energized plating ,without immunity just 2-3 melee hits from a krogan are enough to kill shepardt.So my team is wrex and kaidan,then liara and wrex after i get her.

[Sajon1]

In mass effect 2 you spent the entire game recruiting team members. In Me1 you spent the entire game saving the galaxy with them at your side. Both were good but Me1 was amazing as far as main story and what not.

[tonnactus]

Ecael wrote...

I wouldn't call it dumbed down, as they just shifted every useful weapon and armor mod to the upgrade terminal. It simplifies things by a ton and doesn't leave much choice to the player, but it's still progression in a different form.

Much choice? Dead space,funnily a game from Ea and a shooter, give the player more choices how to upgrade his weapon.
I Dead Space,the player decide which part of the weapon should be improved by placing energy nodes with a bench.
Want to improve the radius? Do it when you want and have enough nodes for it.Want to improve fire rate.Its the same.

In MAss Effect 2 i coudnt do the headshot upgrade when i want,the armor upgrade has to come first.Really great for an rgp,
isnt it?
O,dead space even has usefull shops where the player could buy weapons,air and first aid with the looted money.

[Ecael]

tonnactus wrote...

Ecael wrote...

I wouldn't call it dumbed down, as they just shifted every useful weapon and armor mod to the upgrade terminal. It simplifies things by a ton and doesn't leave much choice to the player, but it's still progression in a different form.

Much choice? Dead space,funnily a game from Ea and a shooter, give the player more choices how to upgrade his weapon.
I Dead Space,the player decide which part of the weapon should be improved by placing energy nodes with a bench.
Want to improve the radius? Do it when you want and have enough nodes for it.Want to improve fire rate.Its the same.

In MAss Effect 2 i coudnt do the headshot upgrade when i want,the armor upgrade has to come first.Really great for an rgp,
isnt it?
O,dead space even has usefull shops where the player could buy weapons,air and first aid with the looted money.

I've always thought an open-ended tech tree would be a good fit for a weapon customization system for Mass Effect - hopefully we see some form of it in Mass Effect 3.

Still, progression is progression - the upgrades just became another number to increase as you leveled up and completed missions for credits and resources.

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

Of course you would say that.

In truth - and even though I'm as much pro ME 1 as you are pro ME 2, I can admit it - neither game is really difficult. All that talk about strategies, it only matters at the beginning of ME 1, and never in ME 2. Because at least in the beginning of ME 1, you don't have the powers, nor the weapon proficiencies. You are however a perfect shot in ME 2 right from waking up after two years (yeah, very realistic), so even on the highest difficulty the only real challenge comes from the mediocre controls. Once you've mastered those, it's just running from pew-pew to pew-pew. With a few exceptions like the end of the Tali mission that require at least a bit of planning. Happens way too infrequent though.

That said, I for one couldn't care less about how challenging or diverse combat is. It's not the reason I buy or don't buy the Mass Effect games. My main interests are the writing and story. That the game is so weak in these regards, is its main problem.

Yes, I would say that because I think it's true.

I do sort of agree with you, I don't think that either ME's combat is that deep (when I say it's tactical I simply mean that it's deeper than, say, Call of Duty or Halo) and it doesn't take much thought. The tactics pretty much amount to using the right power in the right situation. It's not Total War or anything.

However, I personally wouldn't call ME1 on Insanity easy. That's just nuts. And ME2 is pretty difficult at higher levels.

[uberdowzen]

tonnactus wrote...

On hardcore and insanity even varren have armor.And no,even bosses should be affected,why not?

To understand what nonsense this so called protection system is(not only by the lore),just imagine, a mage have to destroy the armor of a warrior with a sword and only after that he/she could use their spell?

Sound stupid? It is stupid.That bosses take less damage frpm biotics make sense.That they are nearly unaffected doesnt make any sense.

And even then its inconsequent ,why harbinger and a scion could be stopped by a singularity,but not geth primes(but is affected by melee,lol) or a heavy mech? Harbinger is the main boss, you know?

You really need to stop complaining about the protection system. You're implying that as a biotic character you never needed to use a gun in ME1.

Yes, I totally agree that in a fantasy RPG it would be nuts to force a magic character to have to use a sword before they could use magic. In Mass Effect however Shepherd is (no matter what class you are) a soldier who at the very least has proficiency with a pistol (and the very similar sub machine gun). And should I also remind you that most RPGs (including ME1, I think, don't quote me on that) have some sort of resistance system meaning that spells don't always work.

And why does it make no sense that bosses can completely resist biotic attacks. Think about the cinematic with the two asari in ME2 fighting. Note that they are both using biotic abilities against each other but they are countering each other. The protection system in ME2 is simply representing this.

And Harbinger isn't the main boss, he's just a tough enemy you fight throughout the game.

[uberdowzen]

tonnactus wrote...

Well,at least rockets and snipers could still kill you.
Rockets in MAss Effect 2.Sit in cover for 2 seconds.

Because it's amazingly fun losing 10 minutes of progress because you make one tiny mistake.

[uberdowzen]

tonnactus wrote...

Really? I nearly fall asleep as an engineer with dominate on insanity.

Oh well.

[uberdowzen]

Terror_K wrote...

Some of them were, but aside from the trinket you get from Sha'ira pretty much all of these were cases of giving you simple information about something you'd found. And they were still a minority compared to the amount of UNC quests that had proper dialogue, set-up and involved interesting characters. This is opposed to the N7 missions all of which have none of this.

I'm not saying that there weren't any good UNC missions, in fact they were the highlight of the UCWs. My problem was the large amount of driving you had to put up with to fight through the same dungeon you've already fought through 10 times to watch a very basic cinematic and make a moral choice. Try and deny that if they took the situations, environments and combat encounters of N7 missions and combined it with the characters and moral choices of UNC missions that you wouldn't have perfect sidequests?

I'd also like to point out that I was just saying how saying the emails ruined the tone was a bit ridiculous.

[bjdbwea]

uberdowzen wrote...

Because it's amazingly fun losing 10 minutes of progress because you make one tiny mistake.

Yes, it is. What's the point in making everything so easy? What's the point if the game forgives every mistake? In that case, it is indeed almost reduced to a movie, and you should wonder why you are "playing" at all. I for one want the gameplay to be challenging, and especially if they put so much emphasis on the combat already.

That said, the save points of course shouldn't be too rare. It's not necessary to do it like in OFP. But losing 10 minutes is perfectly acceptable, as long as it happens because you made a mistake and not because of a stupid bug like Shepard suddenly flying up into the sky like in ME 2. You console players care so much about your "achievements", but it seems you don't actually want to achieve anything in the game. Instead, everything has to happen immediately and on the first try.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 30 mai 2010 - 02:43 .

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

Yes, it is. What's the point in making everything so easy? What's the point if the game forgives every mistake? In that case, it is indeed almost reduced to a movie, and you should wonder why you are "playing" at all. I for one want the gameplay to be challenging, and especially if they put so much emphasis on the combat already.

That said, the save points of course shouldn't be too rare. It's not necessary to do it like in OFP. But losing 10 minutes is perfectly acceptable, as long as it happens because you made a mistake and not because of a stupid bug like Shepard suddenly flying up into the sky like in ME 2. You console players care so much about your "achievements", but it seems you don't actually want to achieve anything in the game. Instead, everything has to happen immediately and on the first try.

Why on earth do you keep on calling me a console player? Do you actually read my replies? I want the gameplay to be challenging too, but how is losing 10 minutes of progress, then having to blast your way through the easy parts to get back up to the hard part where you got killed fun? If games are meant to be a test of your abilities (which is a point of view I strongly disagree with) how is repeating something you've already done and had no trouble with test you?

10 minutes is far too long. A lot can happen in 10 minutes and it's even more irritating in RPGs as you don't just have to redo combat but also reenact conversations so you get the same result. I thought that ME2 felt a lot more fair in this respect. If you made a mistake, you could usually make up for it, without losing large amounts of progress.

Also, on the subject of bugs, flying up into the sky is irritating (although I think it only happened to me once) but so it falling through the floor, accidently shooting enemies out of the level, enemies getting shot into parts of the level they aren't meant to reach and the game freezing on a regular basis when you leave the galaxy map without going anywhere. All bugs from ME1.

[Terror_K]

uberdowzen wrote...

I'm not saying that there weren't any good UNC missions, in fact they were the highlight of the UCWs. My problem was the large amount of driving you had to put up with to fight through the same dungeon you've already fought through 10 times to watch a very basic cinematic and make a moral choice. Try and deny that if they took the situations, environments and combat encounters of N7 missions and combined it with the characters and moral choices of UNC missions that you wouldn't have perfect sidequests?

I won't. In fact, I've said since my original review of ME2 that if they could have the variations and unique locations of the N7 missions and give them the presentation, polish and style of the UNC ones we'd have fantastic sidequests. That said, I do feel there still needs to be some big open areas to explore now and then, not necessarily with every planet one lands on, but at least have a few. ME2 was also missing that vast, epic sense of loneliness and scope that the Uncharted Worlds had, and having all the planets you landed on being alive and flourishing just seemed too unrealistic, since most worlds in space would be realistically dead. I doubt even those who hated the original worlds would complain if there were only say half a dozen or so of them, and the rest of the side-quest worlds were more in the style of the N7 locations (though hopefully a little less linear in design).

I'm actually really interested to see how Overlord will play out, because if it meets expectations given what's been said about it it could very well end up being the perfect template for how sidequests should be in ME3. Perhaps that's BioWare's experiment, though I recall BDtS was something of this and while many fans said they felt it was really well done and should form the template of sidequests in ME2, it doesn't seem like BioWare chose to listen to that recommendation.

[KitsuneRommel]

tonnactus wrote...

Sentinel and engineer could choose the medic specialisation and were support classes.
And this works,because squadmates didnt do 50 percent less damage with weapons in the first game

I've already posted this image elsewhere but

Ah, yes. "AI". They are going to need a LOT of support.

Biotics couldnt be goods if Mass Effect just have more tech enemies that could damp your abilites and/or enemy biotics could do the same to shepardt.(More geth primes)

You just have to be faster than them. I'm not sure when was the last time I got hit by a sabotage or dampening. Last biotic was in Noveria and I ended up stuck in a stairway. That's because you don't even have to be in LOS to pull half of the enemies with singularity.

Diversity in enemy groups is the right solution for this. Making most biotics talents useless is just as cheap as to remove an inventory rather then make it better.

My first ME2 game was Adept on veteran difficulty. I didn't feel useless at all. Singularity was still a monster.

Try an engineer.Without barrier or any biotic power. Mass Effect is
not that easy without barrier or immunity.

Well I only use barrier for the snipers really. I guess I'll try that engineer with minimalistic playthrough. I don't think I could stand driving around the UCW planets again so soon.

[Jack_Shandy]

I think the main problem people have with ME2 stems from a misunderstanding. You'll have to forgive me if someone's said this in the last 133 pages, but:



Mass Effect 2 is not an RPG. It is a shooter. If you want to be more specific, it's Gears of War with a level-up system and Dialogue.That does not, in any way, mean that it's a bad game. If you go into it looking for Dragon Age, then- well, sure, you're not going to find what you're looking for.



There is a difference between Dumbing Down and Streamlining. Dumbing Down is getting rid of features that made the game great: Streamlining is getting rid of features the game didn't need.



Deus Ex 2 was dumbed down. In doing so, it lost a lot of the important features that made Deus Ex so great to play.



Mass Effect 2 was Streamlined. In doing so, it lost a huge amount of clunky, useless features. It lost the huge amounts of useless weapons the first game threw at you at every opportunity. It lost the need to pause the game to select squad commands every single time you entered a battle, mostly using hotkeys instead. It lost the vehical sections everyone complained about (Although replacing them with the scanning minigame wasn't much of an improvement). It lost the huge amounts of useless, unneccesary cookie-cutter sidequests.



You can complain about Mass Effect 2 not being an RPG, but ME1 was never an RPG either. It just had a ton of useless old RPG mechanics that never really added any depth.

[CroGamer002]

Ecael wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

KitsuneRommel wrote...


Is there any character class in ME1 that stays even a bit challenging in later levels?

Try an engineer.Without barrier or any biotic power.
Mass Effect is not that easy without barrier or immunity.

Except Ashley and Wrex will always have Immunity and/or Barrier, and the game gets easier as Energized Plating and the last level of Tungsten/Shredder Ammo starts dropping.

Mass Effect 1 and 2 are both easy after the first playthrough.

Unless you play Insanity, then you die( at least I) many times in same room and in many rooms. In both games.

[CroGamer002]

Ally AI stupidity in ME2 isn't rare, but in ME1 OH-HO! God is it ridicilous.

[uberdowzen]

Terror_K wrote...

I won't. In fact, I've said since my original review of ME2 that if they could have the variations and unique locations of the N7 missions and give them the presentation, polish and style of the UNC ones we'd have fantastic sidequests. That said, I do feel there still needs to be some big open areas to explore now and then, not necessarily with every planet one lands on, but at least have a few. ME2 was also missing that vast, epic sense of loneliness and scope that the Uncharted Worlds had, and having all the planets you landed on being alive and flourishing just seemed too unrealistic, since most worlds in space would be realistically dead. I doubt even those who hated the original worlds would complain if there were only say half a dozen or so of them, and the rest of the side-quest worlds were more in the style of the N7 locations (though hopefully a little less linear in design).

I'm actually really interested to see how Overlord will play out, because if it meets expectations given what's been said about it it could very well end up being the perfect template for how sidequests should be in ME3. Perhaps that's BioWare's experiment, though I recall BDtS was something of this and while many fans said they felt it was really well done and should form the template of sidequests in ME2, it doesn't seem like BioWare chose to listen to that recommendation.

Well hopefully that's what they'll do for ME3. I do agree that it was a bit implausible having all the lush vibrant worlds (which did have a slightly annoying tendency to look very similar)  I don't think that the UCWs really were the best way of doing this. I do think ME2 needs some more "dead" worlds but that doesn't mean they can be slack with the level design like they were with the UCWs.

[Terror_K]

Jack_Shandy wrote...

I think the main problem people have with ME2 stems from a misunderstanding. You'll have to forgive me if someone's said this in the last 133 pages, but:

Mass Effect 2 is not an RPG. It is a shooter. If you want to be more specific, it's Gears of War with a level-up system and Dialogue.That does not, in any way, mean that it's a bad game. If you go into it looking for Dragon Age, then- well, sure, you're not going to find what you're looking for.

No, the Mass Effect games are RPGs. They fit the definition, and have been officially stated as being RPGs, even if the second game doesn't do a terribly good job of it. So if anybody has a misunderstanding, I'm afraid its you.

There is a difference between Dumbing Down and Streamlining. Dumbing Down is getting rid of features that made the game great: Streamlining is getting rid of features the game didn't need.

Actually, by definition, streamlining should technically be giving us the same stuff in the most efficient and user-friendly way possible. What BioWare did was change and cut stuff and take what may have begun as streamlining too far, and thus dumbed down the game. And that's usually when dumbing down comes into play: when streamlining goes too far.

The fact is, many of us feel that BioWare did get rid of features that made the game great, which is why those of us that are complaining about it are. Part of what makes RPGs great is that they usually have a little more complexity to them than other genres, but when you go too far and take that away, you lose of one the elements that many feel make RPGs great. What a game needs is very much a point of view: some would say that Mass Effect needs planet exploration, which in the sequel has totally gone.

Deus Ex 2 was dumbed down. In doing so, it lost a lot of the important features that made Deus Ex so great to play.

Mass Effect 2 was Streamlined. In doing so, it lost a huge amount of clunky, useless features. It lost the huge amounts of useless weapons the first game threw at you at every opportunity. It lost the need to pause the game to select squad commands every single time you entered a battle, mostly using hotkeys instead. It lost the vehical sections everyone complained about (Although replacing them with the scanning minigame wasn't much of an improvement). It lost the huge amounts of useless, unneccesary cookie-cutter sidequests.

A lot of people liked the vehicle sections and feel the sections themselves weren't the problem, and a lot of people feel the sidequests in ME2 are even worse in their execution than the UNC ones in ME1 were.

All this proves is how much ME2 lost, but it never gained enough to make up for it. It took so much away and added so little, and almost everything that wasn't taken away was so watered down that it lost any remaining depth in the process. The devs of ME2 didn't do anything to fix the issues of the first game beyond throwing away the issue and thus ignoring the problems entirely, then replacing it with mechanics that are so simple that there's no way they can technically break. This has ME2 as a less broken game, but a more shallow one in the process.

You can complain about Mass Effect 2 not being an RPG, but ME1 was never an RPG either. It just had a ton of useless old RPG mechanics that never really added any depth.

Again, it is an RPG, and those mechanics still had far more depth than Mass Effect 2 has, whether it succeeded at utilising them or not.

[Christmas Ape]

re: Subject Line.



Nope. Not even a little, except for feeling rushed on the first playthrough.

Certainly didn't miss two hours of every five being spent driving across featureless terrain (and I liked the Mako) or turning inventory items into 0 omni-gel or credits because both were maxed out ten levels ago.

The fact I'm always playing Mass Effect 2, as opposed to trying to find the game in mountain valleys and under a pile of useless weapons & mods, has been a big plus for me.

But then, I don't value cruft for cruft's sake, preferring to group games in the genres of "fun", "pretty good", and "trade-in".

[SkullandBonesmember]

Jack_Shandy wrote...

I think the main problem people have with ME2 stems from a misunderstanding. You'll have to forgive me if someone's said this in the last 133 pages, but:

Mass Effect 2 is not an RPG. It is a shooter. If you want to be more specific, it's Gears of War with a level-up system and Dialogue.That does not, in any way, mean that it's a bad game. If you go into it looking for Dragon Age, then- well, sure, you're not going to find what you're looking for.

There is a difference between Dumbing Down and Streamlining. Dumbing Down is getting rid of features that made the game great: Streamlining is getting rid of features the game didn't need.

Deus Ex 2 was dumbed down. In doing so, it lost a lot of the important features that made Deus Ex so great to play.

Mass Effect 2 was Streamlined. In doing so, it lost a huge amount of clunky, useless features. It lost the huge amounts of useless weapons the first game threw at you at every opportunity. It lost the need to pause the game to select squad commands every single time you entered a battle, mostly using hotkeys instead. It lost the vehical sections everyone complained about (Although replacing them with the scanning minigame wasn't much of an improvement). It lost the huge amounts of useless, unneccesary cookie-cutter sidequests.

You can complain about Mass Effect 2 not being an RPG, but ME1 was never an RPG either. It just had a ton of useless old RPG mechanics that never really added any depth.

I luld. Do you think Fallout 1-3 aren't RPGs? Do you define an RPG by being from Japan?

Modifié par SkullandBonesmember, 30 mai 2010 - 07:21 .

[CroGamer002]

Jack_Shandy wrote...


You can complain about Mass Effect 2 not being an RPG, but ME1 was never an RPG either. It just had a ton of useless old RPG mechanics that never really added any depth.

Modifié par Mesina2, 30 mai 2010 - 07:24 .

[Darth Drago]

Mesina2 wrote...
Ally AI stupidity in ME2 isn't rare, but in ME1 OH-HO! God is it ridicilous.

I’ll take my ME1 AI over the ME2 one any day of the week. There have been more than a few times where I’m left alone because the crappy ME2 AI has my 2 squad mates move to some stupid location, usually not even close to the fight.

-Jack’s loyalty mission when you run into the pack of Varren is one such place. My so called squad went toward the door we came in at.
-Thane’s recruiting mission is another. On one level my squad went down the ramp we just came up.

*mild spoiler below*


Its bad enough half the time they seem to have a death wish by running towards the enemy. Got to love Kasumi using her Shadow Strike outside the protection bubble during the mission you bring a biotic in the final battles.

[CroGamer002]

Darth Drago wrote...

Mesina2 wrote...
Ally AI stupidity in ME2 isn't rare, but in ME1 OH-HO! God is it ridicilous.

I’ll take my ME1 AI over the ME2 one any day of the week. There have been more than a few times where I’m left alone because the crappy ME2 AI has my 2 squad mates move to some stupid location, usually not even close to the fight.

-Jack’s loyalty mission when you run into the pack of Varren is one such place. My so called squad went toward the door we came in at.
-Thane’s recruiting mission is another. On one level my squad went down the ramp we just came up.

*mild spoiler below*


Its bad enough half the time they seem to have a death wish by running towards the enemy. Got to love Kasumi using her Shadow Strike outside the protection bubble during the mission you bring a biotic in the final battles.

1st better that they are all over the place then in your aim like in ME1
2nd never happend to me on ME2, but similiar on ME1
3rd you don't die when you leave buble same second and that's not AI problem