10273 réponses à ce sujet

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

megatron999 wrote...

The story was great for ME2! you get revived by cerberaus and you travel the galaxies killing bad guys. It explains why the Reapers want to kill everyone to harvest them to make more Geth.

I know the story, and I bought and played every single one of BioWare's previous games. ME 2 has their weakest story ever. It lives through the recruitment and loyalty quests, but the main story is between bad and ridiculous.

Weakest story ever? Did you play Neverwinter Nights?

[Stounga]

uberdowzen wrote...

Stounga wrote...

What disappointed me about ME2 was the difficulty, Insanity was far too easy in Mass Effect 1, certain things did make it fun here and there, mostly just the turrets on the last level on the burning citadel. Other than that it was hopelessly easy.

In number 2 on Insanity its way too hard in some places not because its challenging but because it is cheap and unfair, I consider Horizon to be the funnest part of Insanity on ME2 with those 2 Scions and countless Husks. Running and gunning dodging shockwaves. Although my personal favourite is the Praetorian in the collector ship.

However; places like Jedore where the only fathomable way to beat her is to lure stuff outside the sealed door thereby breaking a game mechanic I find ultimately stupid.
Some of those places are so stupidly cheap its annoying that I got to abuse mechanics just to simply move forward with the game. Yes those moments are rare but there is a few of them and it is so annoying.

While we're on here I also find that having Harbinger mega knock me off cover is possibly the most annoying mechanic ever made. Still, builds some tense moments.

Sorry, Insanity is too easy in ME1? Really? I got stuck on the first fight on the citadel with a brand new character. Insanity is easy-ish if you have a new game + character, but otherwise it's not actually possible to finish.

Rubbish, it is more than possible. I did it from scratch. Once you grasp mechanics of the first game it was a ploughthrough not a playthrough. 

ME2 is full of cheap deaths and cover that doesn't quite cover you, although fair dues to it, the difficulty was increased. I think the different combat mechanics of the second game suited the insanity mode better. 

Also; Mordin is a armor removing God.



As for the folk above talking about story, I found the story of the game quite engaging but I played the first game a hell of a lot so it was basically building on-top of hallowed ground for me. The story structure itself I find alittle weak with the recruiting of the Aliens. I also find it a shame they chose to give the most interesting Character Legion the least amount of air time to the main story. Although they did shift the story around alot before releasing so thats more of a development issue and not a story.

Modifié par Stounga, 08 mai 2010 - 11:38 .

[uberdowzen]

Vena_86 wrote...

I found out how the Oblivion lock picking works without reading any forum or manual. And even after having it dones probably a thousand times (literally) its still not nearly as boring as planet scanning after 3 times.
And after I played a character with a little charisma focus even the persuation mini game was quite interesting after i got the hang of it.
These mini games are neither boring, nor take lots of time, stay challenging and are seamlessly integrated into the game without feeling like something tacked on and unrelated.
BioWare does many things better but this is something where they could learn a things or two from Bethesda.

How did you find out? It doesn't say anywhere how it works, all I know is that if one of the tumblers goes upwards too quickly then you'll break a lockpick if you click. And I still suck at it even though I now vaguely understand how it works.

I thought the persuade mini game was kinda stupid, but my biggest
problem with it was it didn't actually relate to what you were doing.
You were just playing a weird little minigame with little or no relation
to acutally persuading someone.

I think the problem people has with the mining mini game is that they do it when they don't need to. I'm not saying it's a good minigame in anyway (seriously, surveying hasn't worked in either ME1 or ME2, they just need to ditch it entirely) but it's only tedious if you do it when you don't need the resources.

[bjdbwea]

uberdowzen wrote...

Weakest story ever? Did you play Neverwinter Nights?

Yes. That had a bad story too. Actually NWN suffered from the same problem: The developers wasted too much time on other stuff, and the story suffered.

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Weakest story ever? Did you play Neverwinter Nights?

Yes. That had a bad story too. Actually NWN suffered from the same problem: The developers wasted too much time on other stuff, and the story suffered.

Yes, it had a worse story than ME2. And the focus of that game wasn't the story, it was meant to be a sort of online DND simulator. The story in that was essentially an example module.

[bjdbwea]

But BioWare learned from their mistake, and SoZ and especially HotU had much better stories. I hope they will also learn from the numerous mistakes they made with ME 2, the most important one once again being a badly written and badly told story.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 08 mai 2010 - 11:57 .

[Darth Drago]

uberdowzen wrote...

Darth Drago wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

The part with the armature you mentioned, that's the only way I really been able to beat that part.

How would you fix the issue? I don't think removing crouch was a quick fix (with the amount of work that went into ME2's cover system, I'd say it was far from it). I don't think this was a case of "we could spend a month fixing the AI or a day removing crouch", I suspect that it was the only fix.

I definitly agree that the cover needs to be better implemented into the environment though.

-Fixing the armature for example here would have been easy. Once it took a hit from any attack it would move. Use the standard movement program every other armature in the game used. All it would have taken was to have it move to where you started the level at and you wouldn’t be able to use that glitch to kill it, end of problem.

For ME2 fixing the crouching exploit would have been just as similar. Since all your enemies fallow 1 of 3 combat routines, (1. Charger, 2. Hold the line and 3. Sniper) having the game switch to a new one routine like 4. Move to another location would have worked.

Since we’ll probably never know what this ME2 exploit was exactly or if it even happened a lot in the game I cant fully guess on how to fix it but removing the crouch was not the first choice I would have gone with. To me that’s like a doctor amputating your hand to remove a splinter in your finger.

Besides, Its not like the combat AI engine in ME2 was that good to begin with.

So, not knowing exactly what the issue was, you've worked out a better method than Bioware (who spend all of their days trying to fix these issues) that will totally alleviate the problem. Except that the problem is still there, the AI now just has a slightly better chance of combatting it.

Oh, on the note of the doctor analogy, depending on how bad the splinter was a doctor may be forced to amputate the finger in extreme circumstances. I think a better analogy is having your appendix removed, it's just casuing problems and it's completely superfluous so it's better to remove it.

-First off, appendix? I’m sorry but last I heard having an appendix going bad is I life or death situation. If you dong get it removed your likely to die. So with your little analogy your saying leaving the crouch in the game is a game killer? By the way, amputate a finger maybe but not the whole hand like i used in my example.

-I came up with a quick solution in a few minutes. What did they do? Oh yea, remove the symptom of the problem but not the cause. Keep in mind the BioWare ME2 team claims to have spent a lot of time researching and playing shooter games. So why would there even be a exploit in the combat part of the game in the first place? There shouldn’t have been a problem if they did their homework in the first place.

[KitsuneRommel]

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

Weakest story ever? Did you play Neverwinter Nights?
[/quote]

I'm forced to paste this Gamespot review that brings tears to my eyes (and not becuase it's so good).

The first of these is the brunt of the game, and it's by all means a
lengthy, highly entertaining D&D campaign. It's comparable with and
in many ways superior to BioWare's previous RPGs--or any other top-notch
RPG to date for that matter. If Neverwinter Nights offered nothing
other than this campaign, it would still be one of the best RPGs to come out in years.

Oh god kill me now

Edit:
[quote]
But BioWare learned from their mistake, and SoZ and especially HotU had
much better stories. I hope they will also learn from the numerous
mistakes they made with ME 2, the most important one once again being a
badly written and badly told story.[/true]

While SoU wasn't that much of an improvement at least HotU was good. I played NVN a lot in co-op with my friend and HotU was the only campaign we'd play.

Modifié par KitsuneRommel, 09 mai 2010 - 12:15 .

[element eater]

its hard to say me2 has a poor story i think the judgement should wait till the third game middle parts usualy feel weeker interms of plot wwhen u see them alone because they get constricted by being the middle part.

dissapointments in ME 2 for were the lack of exploration and too few side missions along with the limited parts of the ME 1 romance characters who should of definately have been given more significance when encountered regardless of choices made in ME 1. also i think we should all hope they do something about that scanning thing which is tedious to the extreme if they arent going to give us planet exploration at least give us something marginaly enjoyable

Modifié par element eater, 09 mai 2010 - 12:17 .

[bjdbwea]

Sounds like one of the reviews for ME 2 that are just as exaggerated.

[KitsuneRommel]

Stounga wrote...

What disappointed me about ME2 was the difficulty, Insanity was far too easy in Mass Effect 1, certain things did make it fun here and there, mostly just the turrets on the last level on the burning citadel. Other than that it was hopelessly easy.

Sadly that's true.

However; places like Jedore where the only fathomable way to beat her is to lure stuff outside the sealed door thereby breaking a game mechanic I find ultimately stupid.

I think only the Krogan Battlemasters attack your side of the map.

While we're on here I also find that having Harbinger mega knock me off cover is possibly the most annoying mechanic ever made. Still, builds some tense moments.

You can avoid those by moving sideways out of the beams way in cover.

[Stounga]

KitsuneRommel wrote...

Stounga wrote...

What disappointed me about ME2 was the difficulty, Insanity was far too easy in Mass Effect 1, certain things did make it fun here and there, mostly just the turrets on the last level on the burning citadel. Other than that it was hopelessly easy.

Sadly that's true.

However; places like Jedore where the only fathomable way to beat her is to lure stuff outside the sealed door thereby breaking a game mechanic I find ultimately stupid.

I think only the Krogan Battlemasters attack your side of the map.

While we're on here I also find that having Harbinger mega knock me off cover is possibly the most annoying mechanic ever made. Still, builds some tense moments.

You can avoid those by moving sideways out of the beams way in cover.

Ah, I'm more than finished with insanity now but thanks anyway. The harbinger tactic does work in theory you just got to hope the cover your on is there to move to. The other permanent way to avoid him is to find cover where you are fully stood up, or a thick piece like a wall or something. As for the battle masters I think she releases more than 1 a time and all the cover is destructible with a Mech walking around firing rockets and she is doing the same. There may be a way to do it properly but it seems like a pretty unfair fight to me.

[Dark Slayer1458]

I thought it was awesome...though i have to admit there is little replayability imo. I played ME1 like 5 times, I played ME2 twice.

[SithLordExarKun]

bjdbwea wrote...

You claimed ME 1 forced a romance upon you that couldn't be broken up before killing the LI on Virmire.

Correct.

bjdbwea wrote...
That is simply not true. Fact: Ýou can tell them clearly that you aren't interested in a romance, then it will stop.

That is simply not true. Fact: once you have locked in a romance, "accidently" or not. you cannot break up. Keyword to open your eyes to : locked.

I, never(i repeat) ,never chose the romance path with kaiden and it got locked in for me, and i couldn't break it up. That is even worse than ME2 squadmates hitting on you, at least they start hitting on you much later in the game unlike the beginning in ME1(look at how kaiden starts showing interest in you after the first or second mission) and you at the least get the end it anytime unlike the first game which gets permenently locked.

bjdbwea wrote...
Like you did with Liara, you can do the same with Kaidan. I will take your post as a retraction of your previous false statement then.

I just replayed ME 3 days ago, i could not, repeat, could NOT break up with kaiden once the romance got locked in.

Hell liara started hitting on my femshep without me even instigating anything unlike jacob whom i could talk to without getting flirty, infact liara was the only one i could reject and be "nice to" in the process. When she started asking femshep if shes in a relationship with kaiden, the kaiden romance path gets locked, any other option will choose liara instead which may or may not initiate a confrontation later on in the game.

So no, i am not a liar nor am i making sh!t up. Deal with it.

bjdbwea wrote...
On to ME 2 then. Are you telling me the game does not force a romance upon you? A female Shepard can't even talk to Jacob ONCE without it sounding like she's forcefully flirting with him. All you can do is not talk to him at all. That's the only blatant occasion though, most companions simply stop talking once you cancel their romance. Garrus for example is always calibrating. How's that good, how's it better than having alternative "friendship" conversations like in ME 1?

HA, just like how femshep flirts with him in the games prologue when she awakens, right you cant talk to him once at all without such a flirty attitude!
I call bullsh!t on this one.

But at the least you CAN break up and are not forced into a romance path in ME2 unlike the first game, if anyone is pulling something out of their arse, its nobody but you. Its funny how i still can talk to garrus without ever going down the romance path, or even thane for that matter.

At least these characters had personality and more interesting things to say unlike some ME1 characters(who just talks about her interests in you and her boring days as an archeologist)

bjdbwea wrote...



Because it just isn't true at
all. The ME 1 romances are better on many levels, and I say that
NOT only because I like the characters themselves more.

Its better in your opinion, don't talk like what ever you say =
universal fact. Right liara finding interest in you just because of your
exposure to the prothean beacons which becomes a milkd obsession after
wards  is much better than an assassin who became afraid to die after he
starts to love you or a psycho biotic regretting the chaos and
brutality she inflicted so long ago when she finally found someone she
cares for.

bjdbwea wrote...


I know the story, and I bought and
played every single one of BioWare's previous games. ME 2 has their
weakest story ever. It lives through the recruitment and loyalty quests,
but the main story is between bad and ridiculous.

Yes
because Dragon Age origins story isn't weak and generic as well(What was
that? Gather an army to find a bunch of dark spawn invading the lands
and save the day!) yet it was a better game than ME1 in my opinion.

ME1's
story for the most part wasn't fantastic(investigate a bunch of planets
and the revelation comes very late in the game), neither was kotor(find
some ancient factory that threatens the galaxy which has been covered a
million times in the star wars universe) nor GTA4, yet these games were
critically acclaimed.

Story isn't everything, if i want a pure
story based game with a great story i would go play the classical Final
fantasies, watch a movie or read a bloody book.

Movies like The
Terminator, Aliens, Titanic and The Empire strikes back had incredibly generic storylines but that  didn't stop them from being fantastic movies, because sometimes its the journey or the character story that makes it interesting.

Modifié par SithLordExarKun, 09 mai 2010 - 01:29 .

[TJSolo]

uberdowzen wrote...

TJSolo wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

@ TJSolo, Worst mini-game ever? Not even close. It's not good but it's not crime against nature bad, they just used it too much. Did you ever play Oblivion? Lockpicking and Persuading in that were pretty bad. Or the turret mini game from KOTOR.

I have a copy of Oblivion right now. Persuading is a matter of paying attention to where the disks populate and figuring out how to get high reward with minimal loss. Lock Picking is no where near as bad as planet scanning thanks to the skeleton key, auto attempt, and/or knowing how to lock pick. The turret minigame was bleh, still it is not as bad as planet scanning.The only savior to planet scanning is modding.  You pointing out other bad mini-games just to detract from my opinion of planet scanning being the worst design and implmented mini-game for me. 

I personally didn't like the presuade mini game (not because it was a bad minigame but because it had little or no relation to actually persuading someone) but your argument about the lock picking is ridiculous. You're saying that a high level quest which gives you an item which makes the lockpicking game meaningless makes it good? Auto Attempt sucked (lost so many lockpicks to that and it also shows that bethesda has little faith in the minigame). And knowing how the mini game works is fine, except it doesn't say ingame or in the manual how to actually do it. I had to go to an elder scrolls wiki to finally find out how that game works. Fallout 3 did minigames a lot better (they were very easy but your skill level determined whether you could even attempt it; they were good because it actually felt like you were picking a lock or hacking a computer).

Yes, you're quite right, I am pointing out other bad mini games because I believe you are wrong. Planet Scanning is an appalling mini game but it's not the worst out of every game ever. Have you ever played Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (yes I know I have played that game)? It has two horrific mini games. One where you have to trace out a spell symbol (which I can't put my finger on why it's so bad, it just is) and there's a flying mini game that is just not fun. They are definitly worse than planet scanning.

EDIT: Oh my god how could I forget the horrific Pazaak and (to further completely kill your point) Quasar?

Let me know when Pazaak or Quasar becomes mandatory for upgrades or when those upgrades become mandatory for getting a 'good' outcome for the ending. I have done my share of ripping on pazaak but not because of the design but because of the randon number generator not being random enough and the computer seems to know the outcome, thus bets accordingly.
If planet scanning was not mandatory to an extent it could easily float in the ether of being plain bad. To hinge outcomes of the game on upgrades and to force the players to gather resources for the upgrades via planet scanning just magnifies the design and implementation problem of scanning.

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

But BioWare learned from their mistake, and SoZ and especially HotU had much better stories. I hope they will also learn from the numerous mistakes they made with ME 2, the most important one once again being a badly written and badly told story.

That's unfair. Mass Effect 2's story wasn't as good as ME1's or Dragon Age's but it was still very good. And badly told? That's just ridiculous. If you're hoping they'll "fix" the story telling in ME3, you're going to be dissapointed.

You were also talking about one of the ways ME2 lacked polish is animations in cinematics. ME2 had way more animations than ME1, they were more detailed and the transtions between them aren't noticible like they often are in ME1.

[uberdowzen]

Darth Drago wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Darth Drago wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

The part with the armature you mentioned, that's the only way I really been able to beat that part.

How would you fix the issue? I don't think removing crouch was a quick fix (with the amount of work that went into ME2's cover system, I'd say it was far from it). I don't think this was a case of "we could spend a month fixing the AI or a day removing crouch", I suspect that it was the only fix.

I definitly agree that the cover needs to be better implemented into the environment though.

-Fixing the armature for example here would have been easy. Once it took a hit from any attack it would move. Use the standard movement program every other armature in the game used. All it would have taken was to have it move to where you started the level at and you wouldn’t be able to use that glitch to kill it, end of problem.

For ME2 fixing the crouching exploit would have been just as similar. Since all your enemies fallow 1 of 3 combat routines, (1. Charger, 2. Hold the line and 3. Sniper) having the game switch to a new one routine like 4. Move to another location would have worked.

Since we’ll probably never know what this ME2 exploit was exactly or if it even happened a lot in the game I cant fully guess on how to fix it but removing the crouch was not the first choice I would have gone with. To me that’s like a doctor amputating your hand to remove a splinter in your finger.

Besides, Its not like the combat AI engine in ME2 was that good to begin with.

So, not knowing exactly what the issue was, you've worked out a better method than Bioware (who spend all of their days trying to fix these issues) that will totally alleviate the problem. Except that the problem is still there, the AI now just has a slightly better chance of combatting it.

Oh, on the note of the doctor analogy, depending on how bad the splinter was a doctor may be forced to amputate the finger in extreme circumstances. I think a better analogy is having your appendix removed, it's just casuing problems and it's completely superfluous so it's better to remove it.

-First off, appendix? I’m sorry but last I heard having an appendix going bad is I life or death situation. If you dong get it removed your likely to die. So with your little analogy your saying leaving the crouch in the game is a game killer? By the way, amputate a finger maybe but not the whole hand like i used in my example.

-I came up with a quick solution in a few minutes. What did they do? Oh yea, remove the symptom of the problem but not the cause. Keep in mind the BioWare ME2 team claims to have spent a lot of time researching and playing shooter games. So why would there even be a exploit in the combat part of the game in the first place? There shouldn’t have been a problem if they did their homework in the first place.

Sorry, missed that, I thought you said finger. Besides, this is getting stupid, I think we can both admit that having limbs amputated isn't even close to equivalent to having a mechanic removed from a game.

Firstly, your quick solution is to rewrite parts of the AI. AI coding is one of the most complex areas of game design, hence why so few games have good ones. And, yes, they did study shooter games or, to be more precise, third person cover based shooters like Gears of War, which doesn't have crouch and therefore this issue.

[uberdowzen]

TJSolo wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

TJSolo wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

@ TJSolo, Worst mini-game ever? Not even close. It's not good but it's not crime against nature bad, they just used it too much. Did you ever play Oblivion? Lockpicking and Persuading in that were pretty bad. Or the turret mini game from KOTOR.

I have a copy of Oblivion right now. Persuading is a matter of paying attention to where the disks populate and figuring out how to get high reward with minimal loss. Lock Picking is no where near as bad as planet scanning thanks to the skeleton key, auto attempt, and/or knowing how to lock pick. The turret minigame was bleh, still it is not as bad as planet scanning.The only savior to planet scanning is modding.  You pointing out other bad mini-games just to detract from my opinion of planet scanning being the worst design and implmented mini-game for me. 

I personally didn't like the presuade mini game (not because it was a bad minigame but because it had little or no relation to actually persuading someone) but your argument about the lock picking is ridiculous. You're saying that a high level quest which gives you an item which makes the lockpicking game meaningless makes it good? Auto Attempt sucked (lost so many lockpicks to that and it also shows that bethesda has little faith in the minigame). And knowing how the mini game works is fine, except it doesn't say ingame or in the manual how to actually do it. I had to go to an elder scrolls wiki to finally find out how that game works. Fallout 3 did minigames a lot better (they were very easy but your skill level determined whether you could even attempt it; they were good because it actually felt like you were picking a lock or hacking a computer).

Yes, you're quite right, I am pointing out other bad mini games because I believe you are wrong. Planet Scanning is an appalling mini game but it's not the worst out of every game ever. Have you ever played Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (yes I know I have played that game)? It has two horrific mini games. One where you have to trace out a spell symbol (which I can't put my finger on why it's so bad, it just is) and there's a flying mini game that is just not fun. They are definitly worse than planet scanning.

EDIT: Oh my god how could I forget the horrific Pazaak and (to further completely kill your point) Quasar?

Let me know when Pazaak or Quasar becomes mandatory for upgrades or when those upgrades become mandatory for getting a 'good' outcome for the ending. I have done my share of ripping on pazaak but not because of the design but because of the randon number generator not being random enough and the computer seems to know the outcome, thus bets accordingly.
If planet scanning was not mandatory to an extent it could easily float in the ether of being plain bad. To hinge outcomes of the game on upgrades and to force the players to gather resources for the upgrades via planet scanning just magnifies the design and implementation problem of scanning.

Don't get me wrong, I thought planet scanning was appaling as well. My issue is that people have a problem with planet scanning (which if you manage well shouldn't take you too long) and yet can't see that the Mako, which is essentially planet scanning only slower, is equally bad if not worse.

And I'm pretty sure in Pazaak, the player chooses the bet, not the computer. In fact I'm pretty sure the only "tactic" the computer uses is deciding when to use it's special cards as normally it uses standard black jack dealer rules (keep on adding cards until over a certain number) that has been used in casinos and black jack computer games since the beginning of time.

[StodgyFrost98]

I swear the only thing that I think really killed the replay value in ME2 was the planet scanning, it was so slow and tedious that I would practically fall asleep. Listen Up Bioware devs don't put planet scanning in ME3! If you do you'll kill the gamers and put them in a coma.

[Beerfish]

They should have had planet scanning as it was for the 1st play through, then have a merchant or two unlocked after you beat the game once. The merchant buys and sells resources so you can dump resources you have too many of and buy ones you need or just sell them for cash. That would have easily made me happy.

[TJSolo]

uberdowzen wrote...

Don't get me wrong, I thought planet scanning was appaling as well. My issue is that people have a problem with planet scanning (which if you manage well shouldn't take you too long) and yet can't see that the Mako, which is essentially planet scanning only slower, is equally bad if not worse.

And I'm pretty sure in Pazaak, the player chooses the bet, not the computer. In fact I'm pretty sure the only "tactic" the computer uses is deciding when to use it's special cards as normally it uses standard black jack dealer rules (keep on adding cards until over a certain number) that has been used in casinos and black jack computer games since the beginning of time.

Seems you are getting me wrong. I noted what put the planet scanning in a class by itself, the mandatory nature of it. I got most of my UNC minerals from surveying, which is a lot faster than planet scanning. Gathering minerals while in the Mako was just extra and not needed for me.
Then you try and dredge the Mako into this; which is not a mini game in and of itself. The reasons to gather minerals but it in the completely optional class while gather resources is in a mandatory class if you want a good ending Let's not even go into how performance is effected if resource gathering is skipped.

Oh how I wish pazaak was blackjack, it is not.. Like I stated Kotor1 it appeared that after the hands were dealt the pot cards were put into an array and the pc oppenent seemed aware of the array and played accordingly. In Kotor2 it felt better and seemed that the pc opponent was not peaking into the array and was playing by the rules.

[TJSolo]

Beerfish wrote...

They should have had planet scanning as it was for the 1st play through, then have a merchant or two unlocked after you beat the game once. The merchant buys and sells resources so you can dump resources you have too many of and buy ones you need or just sell them for cash. That would have easily made me happy.

Yes, this would have helped planet scanning greatly. One little feature. Selling excess resources for credits. Along with helping the concept of planet scanning it would have added more depth to the economy which seems to by only buy buy buy.

[uberdowzen]

StodgyFrost98 wrote...

I swear the only thing that I think really killed the replay value in ME2 was the planet scanning, it was so slow and tedious that I would practically fall asleep. Listen Up Bioware devs don't put planet scanning in ME3! If you do you'll kill the gamers and put them in a coma.

Don't worry, Bioware have said planet scanning is gone.

[uberdowzen]

TJSolo wrote...

Seems you are getting me wrong. I noted what put the planet scanning in a class by itself, the mandatory nature of it. I got most of my UNC minerals from surveying, which is a lot faster than planet scanning. Gathering minerals while in the Mako was just extra and not needed for me.
Then you try and dredge the Mako into this; which is not a mini game in and of itself. The reasons to gather minerals but it in the completely optional class while gather resources is in a mandatory class if you want a good ending Let's not even go into how performance is effected if resource gathering is skipped.

Oh how I wish pazaak was blackjack, it is not.. Like I stated Kotor1 it appeared that after the hands were dealt the pot cards were put into an array and the pc oppenent seemed aware of the array and played accordingly. In Kotor2 it felt better and seemed that the pc opponent was not peaking into the array and was playing by the rules.

Actually, I don't think the outcome of the suicide mission would be that bad if you didn't do any upgrades. You'd lose more people, but Shepherd would survive. I suspect that just doing upgrades with the starting resources and maybe quarter of an hour of planet scanning could get most of your team through.

I've always kind of thought of the Mako as a minigame, and I will give you that the resources aren't required, it's still really tedious for a completionist playthrough. And if the resources weren't needed to do well in the mission, would you have as big a problem with the planet scanning?

I'm not totally sure what you mean about Pazaak. Are you saying that you think the computer looks at the cards that it's going to be dealt and then "randomly" chooses special cards accordingly? Or do you think it's just because the computer seems to win a lot? Anyway, Pazaak basically is black jack, minus all the extra rules like splitting etc and with 20 instead of 21 and special cards. Otherwise it's the same.

[AlanC9]

TJSolo wrote...
 Like I stated Kotor1 it appeared that after the hands were dealt the pot cards were put into an array and the pc oppenent seemed aware of the array and played accordingly. 

I didn't see any sign of this. It isn't subject to an actual test without a lot more data than I'm willing to collect, but  I find it hard to imagine that the programmers would go out of their way to have the opponent cheat.  Programmers never write code unless they have to, and I don't see the point of it.