314 réponses à ce sujet

[SOULdi3r]

there ARE other power combos,most of them have just been around since ME1 and so werent talked about as much, for instance the pull+throw combo or my personal favorite: cryo blast+throw, personally i felt like most of the games "castor" problems are either not even really problems (adepts are being little girls, your not the only ones that have to get through defences) or would be solved with the game was built with higher difficules in mind a little more. but that brings me to my next point- if you find that higher difficulties make the game less fun for you (adepts who complain about biotecs vs protection read carefully here) then just stay at low difficulties,that why there are multiple difficulties in the first place and its a single player game so if your so insecure that you feel like less of a person for it that A:just dont tell anyone and B:get a life. POOF  problem solved...

[JediPilot0]

They got the combat awfully close to perfect, and I'd rather they tweak it slightly, than strip major parts out, like they were keen on doing for ME2. ME3 is their last shot.

[Average Gatsby]

JediPilot0 wrote...

They got the combat awfully close to perfect, and I'd rather they tweak it slightly, than strip major parts out, like they were keen on doing for ME2. ME3 is their last shot.

One thing she mentioned at the end of her presentation was more complex enemies. To me, that is a major opportunity to create some unique gameplay options for the adept and engineer.

I have no idea how that would work, but I can imagine some potentially really cool stuff.

[RGFrog]

I just don't understand why the can't make each class bad**** unto itself? Shep as a soldier should be the best shooter around (and don't act like aiming and shooting is hard--it's the easier than button mashing). As an infiltrator, Shep shoud be the sneakiest mofo and able to hide and headshot kill from the shadows. As a vangaurd, Shep should be a tank and the devil himself in cqc. As an engineer, Shep should be able to use tech abillities to own everythig that comes his way. And as an adept, he should be a wizard that would make merlin jealous and in awe.

The only class that should not be heavily biased to a style of gameplay is the sentinel, where shep should be mediocre at everything but in combining it all be unstoppable.

C'mon. This is a hero story. If you hero is a biotic he/she should eventually become the best at it and not even need to think about using a weapon. Hell, both Miranda and Jack have lines about how they use biotics to destroy. And Samara shows just how easy it is for a biotic powerhouse to own in her reveal, and how biotics should be fighting in her dual with Morinth. So, if you play any class that should be the pinnacle of what you obtain: A mortal become bad****ary incarnate in a given role.

Average is spot on in that the shooters (soldier, infiltrator, vangaurd) are pretty close to this ideal. Soldier is spot on imho. Vanguard a close second and Infiltrator is close but not nearly as sneaky as it should be.

However Adept and Engineer... I laugh at those that say these two classes have it easy and all they have to do is sit back and press buttons. With a soldier, that's exactly all I have to do. I load a AP or Warp ammo power or use incendiary from my squad and I can sit back pretty much anywhere and clear everything out on insanity without my heart rate going up at all.

However, in a class where I shouldn't even be equipped with a gun, the adept. I find that without a weapon, i'm dead in an instant if I'm not maniacally careful about cover, timing and positioning and using my squad to keep my own ass out of the fire. I feel sorry for them, cuz an adept on insanity means I'm **** Shep and were the squad not scripted, I'd have lost all loyalty and found myself alone on the Normandy going through the Omega relay with only EDI. But she'd be laughing all the way cuz she made a backup and launched it in a comm buoy before committing the Normandy to a true suicide run.

So, this game gets it right in 3 of the classes and pretty much horribly wrong in all the rest. None of the other classes mesh with the universe they've created nor the main character.

Finally, what is all the power spamming nonsense? There is no power spamming. If you're an adept, powers are your freaking ammo and your defense. Do I rail about how the Soldier class is a freak and all I have to do is load a special ammo into my revenant-f and pretty much spam the ammo in the enemies general direction with my eyes closed? Guess what, it's far easier now to own every level in the game as a soldier than it ever was as an adept in me1.

Quite frankly, what bioware needs to do is sit down and rethink the power based classes and make them bad**** for their power mastery and crippled in weapons usage.

In this universe, if anything were created to negate the use of biotics or tech, then something new would be invented to compensate. But that's not the way it is. Sheilds should provide a challenge to and adept and barrier insta-stripping should be adept 101. Engineers should have tech that can deal with barriers but shouldn't have to sneeze at a shield to know how to make it go away. And armor shouldn't even be an issue to either as armor stops ballistic onslaughts. Kevlar does nothing to stop bioweapons, emp, fire, gas, etc. It's good at stopping bullets. It's a second skin and shouldn't be able to keep an engineer from flash frying your or an adept from lifting you off the ground.

So, the universe, story, the characters themselves are broken and take the player right out of the immersion and the universe they created is far less for it. Unless you go as a soldier as bioware so badly and obviously wants. In which case it's FU to the universe and everything. Here's my specially coated projectile. That's right. You were too stupid to find a way to deal with jacketed metal shavings. You must not have had time in a thousand years to even think an opponent might come at you with a stick and poke your eye out.

There's a reason the reaper looks like a terminator. He's going to have a giant, belt fed, gatling gun with alternating incindiary, warp, ap, shredder ammo that will strip your powers, armor and skin in an instant. Why do you think the reapers are programs in ship. A bullet can't kill data.Biotics could, tech could. but too bad, those abilities are gimped.

[JediPilot0]

Average Gatsby wrote...

JediPilot0 wrote...

They got the combat awfully close to perfect, and I'd rather they tweak it slightly, than strip major parts out, like they were keen on doing for ME2. ME3 is their last shot.

One thing she mentioned at the end of her presentation was more complex enemies. To me, that is a major opportunity to create some unique gameplay options for the adept and engineer.

I have no idea how that would work, but I can imagine some potentially really cool stuff.

True, and I'm excited about what they come up with. I liked the ME2 scenarios with Krogan and Varren. To me, that was a perfect match-up of two previous enemies in ME1, but their combo presented a unique situation. I liked the engineers/vanguards, too. We need more of that expansion on existing archetypes.

I hate to bring up Gears of War in an RPG forum, but Gears 2 expanded all the enmy types without introducing 500 crazy new species. Like the big, heavy boomers who used to only be tanks with grenade launchers now came in many more varieties: Wielding a shield and flail, the classic type, wielding a minigun, and flamethrower types. I think they could do some stuff like that with Krogans, and I'd like to see that type of expansion on every enemy type, rather than introducing new enemies.

I'm already happy with how they did it in ME2 as it is. Salarians being Engineers was brilliant. As well as Asari being biotics. This is opposed to generic enemies in ME1 that could have any type of power and you'd never know what the hell you were fighting.

EDIT- More stuff like how overload insta-gibs flame units would be cool. The engineer should get more of that type of weapon/gear hacks (not just armor-stripping powers, but unique effects), while the biotics should be able to physically control the battle (enemy locations, etc)

Modifié par JediPilot0, 15 mars 2010 - 02:56 .

[Datacakes]

RGFrog wrote...

There's a reason the reaper looks like a terminator. He's going to have a giant, belt fed, gatling gun with alternating incindiary, warp, ap, shredder ammo that will strip your powers, armor and skin in an instant. Why do you think the reapers are programs in ship. A bullet can't kill data.Biotics could, tech could. but too bad, those abilities are gimped.

Lol.  And his eyeballs will project holograms of  Asari nightclub dancers to hypnotize you into a critical mission failure.  But you will like it!

[Ackillez]

Koralis wrote...

Not eliminating universal cooldowns; they make sense from both a gameplay and a roleplaying perspective.
Not a return to ME1.

Yes and no.  Universal Cooldowns cause problems for some powers.  For example, Barrier needs to have a high cooldown so that you can't just spam Barrier and be invincible.  However, triggering Barrier in a firefight basically means that you lose access to powers for quite some time, which sucks.  The end result is that people don't use Barrier in a firefight?  Is that a good thing?

I'd suggest that ME3 have dual-cooldowns for each power

1)  The self-cooldown timer
2)  The universal cooldown timer


If either timer is engaged, then a given power isn't available.  As a rule of thumb, the universal cooldown could be about half of the self-cooldown, but this could be tweaked on a per power basis and adjusted to provide a satisfying gameplay experiance.


This would also allow upgrades and powers to modify universal cooldowns (as present) or specific cooldowns, which could improve the RPG element of the game which was downgraded from ME1 to ME2.

Example:  Barrier Amp - Cooldown on Barrier is reduced 50% and Strength is increased 25%.  Universal cooldown increases by 10%

Quoting this. I suggested the same earlier in a different thread.

There are two problems with the current system:

1. Many fights are too static and can be camped out more or less indefinitely from behind cover

2. The power system is too inflexible; the universal cooldown means that any power that it's very difficult to balance a power so that it's useful in combat but not an easily spammable I-win button (I'm thinking of Reave and Drone here).

If targetting powers as suggested in the OP can be implemented succesfully, it might be worth a shot. However, I think it's a more productive avenue of thought to go for power usage requiring some actual planning. This would also give the game a broader appeal, for there are those who prefer such a playstyle to a shooting-heavy one.

For a list of suggested changes I'd go with these three bullet points:

1. More dynamic battlefields. Less indestructible cover, but for the love of god make the destructible stuff a bit more durable. Kind of like ME1. I think ME2 generally does a good job of providing enemies that advance upon your position, so not much work beyond polishing is needed here.

2. Revamped power system with self-cooldown and universal cooldown values, encouraging the use of different powers in battle. This can be further enhanced by improving upon the system of biotic combos, perhaps by introducing combos to more powers as well as tech abilities. Overload + Incinerate = Tech explosion?

3. Guns should have a role to play for all classes! There are no wizards in Mass Effect. This is the trickiest issue to deal with, but perhaps the SMG/pistol could be further specialised at stripping defenses? This is to an extent already the case in ME2, but it could be expanded upon for example by introducing some choice when upgrading firearms. Keep the squad upgrades sytem as it is, with generic general upgrades for all weapons, but add a special system for Shepard allowing for personal weapon customization. This way a vanguard could upgrade his SMG with better long-range accuracy to counter his weakness in that area, while an adept might go for better damage bonuses vs shields, because that's the specialised function the gun serves for her. Such customization might be too tiresome for use on squadmates, but it should be an option for the main character.

[The Grey Ranger]

Gatsby, You seem to be stating that being faster at getting through a level means better. There are those of us though who prefer a slower, more cautious play style. Adept and engineer work very well with this type of play.  Not everyone does speed runs.

Modifié par The Grey Ranger, 15 mars 2010 - 04:50 .

[RamsenC]

The Grey Ranger wrote...

Gatsby, You seem to be stating that being faster at getting through a level means better. There are those of us though who prefer a slower, more cautious play style. Adept and engineer work very well with this type of play.  Not everyone does speed runs.

I agree that speed doesn't mean better. The problem is the class ability for Engineer and Adept don't do a good enough job of defining the class. 

[TheUnusualSuspect]

I'm puzzled by the claims that the Engineer class is underpowered.  My Engineer breezed through Insanity, dying maybe 4 times, and that's including doing every mission, and 3 out of those 4 times was due to being stupidly aggressive (as in: let's jump into the middle of 5 guys that are distracted by a drone and a dominated, and start punching them, oh crap, 2 weren't distracted, that sort of thing...)

A properly and aggressively played Engineer (with Dominate) won't clear a map as fast as a Vanguard can, but that's only because a Vanguard can spam his shields and cross huge distances in one power hit, whereas an Engineer has to actually walk/run the same distance, but the Engineer can typically just stand in the open half the time while the enemies are distracted and either shoot people with carefully lined up headshots (either pistol or sniper if you take that), or run up and start pounding on them.

A Vanguard can toe-to-toe melee a Scion (that was fun!), but so can an Engineer, but the Engineer uses distraction to prevent his shields from being taken out, as opposed to spamming up shields by charging every few seconds.

For me, the Engineer was the surprise class.  I was dreading playing it at first, thinking it'd be weak with its weapons, but throw in Dominate/AI Hack/Drone, with Incinerate and Overload to shut down enemy weapons, and the Engineer can walk through a battlefied unscratched like Moses parting the Red Sea  (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect, but not too far from the truth).

I was really happy with the Engineer class, and most of the time I never fired a weapon, but damn stuff died quickly (admittedly also with Samara + Miranda also spamming pull/throw/warp/reave/overload).

I do agree with the Adept class having a harder time of things.  For a powerful biotic-only class, they do only have a few tricks up their sleeves for Insanity, and no way to deal with shields unless they take Energy Drain.  Dominate, at the least, should be a class power IMO, or if not that, some biotic equivalent of Energy Drain that saps shields and restores barriers.

Soldier was great as a grunt shooter, and did the job without fuss.  Very one-dimensional, but yeah, a good shooter class.

Infiltrator was an excellent class I felt, with a good mix of damage dealing and crowd control.  Give the Infiltrator the Dominate skill, and that really is like a standing back and capping people in the head amidst the chaos.

Vanguard, which I'm running through Insanity with now, is fine.  It's powerful on some maps, and weak on others.  Should've had Warp instead of Shockwave (IMO), and then it'd make more sense as a crossed-up shooter/biotic.

Haven't played the Sentinel yet.  Can't comment.

As always, just my 2c.

[RamsenC]

Engineer can definitely tear up insanity. All you have to do is incinerate/overload/reave defenses and have squad mates pull>warp. You can do this the entire game just fine and it is the most powerful tactic for Engineer, but there are other tactics you can use if you wish to. Combat Drone just isn't interesting enough as a class defining ability. An Engineer without Combat Drone can tear up most of the game just as well as one without it. I don't think the same could be said for a Soldier without AR or a Vanguard without Charge.

Combat drone is still really nice for Harbinger, YMIR Mechs, Scions, and probably something else I'm forgetting since you cannot strip defenses and destroy them so easily. 

Modifié par RamsenC, 15 mars 2010 - 05:30 .

[TheUnusualSuspect]

RamsenC wrote...

You can do this the entire game just fine and it is the most powerful tactic for Engineer, but there are other tactics you can use if you wish to. Combat Drone just isn't interesting enough as a class defining ability. An Engineer without Combat Drone can tear up most of the game just as well as one without it. I don't think the same could be said for a Soldier without AR or a Vanguard without Charge.

Maybe.  I do reckon you could finish Insanity without AR with a Soldier, and without Cloak as an Infiltrator due to the passive cooldown helping you.  An Adept gets singularity, and as the only crowd-control that an Adept has, it's essential.

No other class gets a "free helper" that allows you to stand up to and melee almost any opponent in the game, one-on-one.  That's a fairly defining feature there, IMO, and to say that it's not exciting to stand up to Harbinger, a YMIR, or a Scion when every other class is running for cover is selling that feature short.  Engineers lack for outright gun-shooting fire-power, and they make up for it with a helper that deals damage and distracts, and allows the Engineer to take more precise shots instead of the stand-up-and-spray of the other shooter classes (excluding Infiltrator).

See, for me, the Combat Drone was excellent, unique, and fit the Engineer bill perfectly.  Yes, you can do without it, but so can every other class get by without their class feature to (except for Adept).

Just horses for courses I guess.  I loved the drone, and IMO, the drone just tipped the Engineer class from merely strong, to absolutely dominating the battlefield, and if that's not the definition of a class defining feature, I'm not sure what is.

[baller7345]

RamsenC wrote...

The Grey Ranger wrote...

Gatsby, You seem to be stating that being faster at getting through a level means better. There are those of us though who prefer a slower, more cautious play style. Adept and engineer work very well with this type of play.  Not everyone does speed runs.

I agree that speed doesn't mean better. The problem is the class ability for Engineer and Adept don't do a good enough job of defining the class. 

The drone and singularity both completely lock down 1 or more enimes (in the case of singularity) which promotes each class as a controlling oriented class.  Both class are classes that are there to control the battlefield so I think their abilites define them just fine. 

[Average Gatsby]

I edited the OP to adjust some of the language I used (replacing disappointed with confused and instead of asking what is the point of the engineer/adept to what is the unique role).



I also included an additional section further explaining my reasoning behind the post, and to include the fact that I'm talking about when an adept or engineer player are really pushing the class to its limits to be the most effective, and not whether the class is fun. Fun doesn't equal effectiveness and vice-versa.



I'd like for my thread to be seen as a friendly fan critique and challenge to the team, not a lament or whine post.

[baller7345]

Average Gatsby wrote...
Even the biggest cryo blast fanboy here, me, doesn't use it much outside of close range and husks. Sometimes even the supplements don't work out so nicely.

Ok I know its a little late but I beg to differ that you are the biggest cryo fanboy here because that would be me .  Anyway I use it for just about everything incinerate and overload become defense strippers which allows me to set up full room control as long as there are no more than 6 enemies possibly 8.  It normally involves cryoing a group of 2 or 3 (7 if you are really lucky) then tossing out my drone on one enemy, and Tali's drone on the other.  If anyone is left they get hit with a concussive shot from Garrus and are the first I run up to punch out.  I've had plenty of occasions where I cryo two separate groups and keep them cryoed while I punch people out so yes I challenge your statement of you being the biggest cryo fanboy .  This works especially well on the platforms on the sucide mission in that I strip the barrier of one collector on the way down with a few smg burts and a consussive shot cryo blast combo freeze him allowing me to drone both of back enemies (the first platform and second third takes a little more time) and spray them with some smg fire before firing a cryo to freeze them both and then punch away.  This only takes about 10-20 seconds per platform sometimes less.   I absoultely love being able to control entire rooms so I found a way to do it.  Of course there are some places that I simply can't do this oh wait pull out the avalanche and job done.


I haven't really noticed a slowdown in my killing speed when I discovered cryo so I don't think I'm playing too ineffecient.

Modifié par baller7345, 15 mars 2010 - 06:55 .

[harman_stalefish]

I'm a fan of armchair designing, so after reading your thoughts Gatsby (which I really liked btw) I'll throw out my ideas of how the casting powers could be altered.



engineers and adepts are supposed to be more about being methodical than say a vanguard, which still employs strategy but is intended to be much more twitch-based. With that in mind, and with wanting to create a more skill-based system where casters are unique in their approach and be able to utilise powers for killing, here is my idea.



Powers still curve, since being able to shoot around cover is a trait that seperates an incinerate from a flaming bullet, from a gameplay perspective. My change is in the way cooldowns work. Cooldowns are still global, but instead of preventing you from using another power until the cooldown timer finishes counting down, any power used during this cooldown period is gimped in both damage/duration, and its ability to curve (maybe). The fluff explanation being that you're pushing yourself to hard to soon for the successive moves to be effective.



Take this as an example. Your first power (cooldown value 100%) has pristine effectiveness. You curve a pull from behind the right side of a crate and it arcs in a sexy semi-circle. your cooldown now drops to 50%. Not wanting to give the enemy time to calm down, you immediately fire another power, except this one is weaker still (cooldown 25%). Every successive attack halves the cooldown meter to the minimum of say 10%, and the cooldown meter's current level indicates the strength of your next spell relative to it's maximum. And the longer you go without casting , the higher the meter gets again.



this allows a castor to alternate between rapid weak attacks or slowly paced strong ones, as the situation calls for a different approach.



Also, I think adepts and engineers need to control more differently. If you max out an omni-tool's cooldown meter, it should overheat, preventing use for a few seconds (like ME1), but in exchange, tech skills should be a bit more powerful even at lower cooldown percentages. And sentinels, with both sorts of skills, should have 2 cooldown meters, one for biotics, and one for the omni-tool.



passive buffs to cooldown times would obviously be balanced according to class.

[JediPilot0]

harman_stalefish wrote...


Powers still curve, since being able to shoot around cover is a trait that seperates an incinerate from a flaming bullet, from a gameplay perspective. My change is in the way cooldowns work. Cooldowns are still global, but instead of preventing you from using another power until the cooldown timer finishes counting down, any power used during this cooldown period is gimped in both damage/duration, and its ability to curve (maybe). The fluff explanation being that you're pushing yourself to hard to soon for the successive moves to be effective.

That's....kind of a cool idea.

[RamsenC]

baller7345 wrote...

RamsenC wrote...

The Grey Ranger wrote...

Gatsby, You seem to be stating that being faster at getting through a level means better. There are those of us though who prefer a slower, more cautious play style. Adept and engineer work very well with this type of play.  Not everyone does speed runs.

I agree that speed doesn't mean better. The problem is the class ability for Engineer and Adept don't do a good enough job of defining the class. 

The drone and singularity both completely lock down 1 or more enimes (in the case of singularity) which promotes each class as a controlling oriented class.  Both class are classes that are there to control the battlefield so I think their abilites define them just fine. 

Since we are talking about using the classes at their most effective strip>pull>warp is going to be better for controlling a group of enemies than casting a singularity. Singularity and combat drone still have their uses for locking down tougher enemies, I just don't think it's enough.

Sentinel essentially does everything the Adept and Engineer can do, but without a lot of extra filler abilities. Locking down one elite enemy is simply not enough control. If the drone would at least attack multiple enemies I would be much happier about Engineer (3 enemies in 5 meters sounds good). For Adept the Singularity is worse on defenses than a true defense stripper and takes longer to cooldown than Pull which sets up Warp explosions just as well. Honestly I think Singularity should have been the only way to set up Warp explosions, that way Adept would have something powerful no other class could have. 

Modifié par RamsenC, 15 mars 2010 - 08:18 .

[_Dannok1234]

I really don't think Engineer needs a boost, it's got to be one of the easiest classes to play. That might not mean the fastest, but it's certainly unique. For me the drone works great as it is, it makes many fights trivial. Add CC from Cryo and Overload etc, and you have a class that can control pretty darn well. Not to mention whenever there is a mech/Geth involved it becomes down right silly.I did Tali's mission at level 14 with my engineer on insanity and it might as well have been normal. 2 points into Ai hacking+drone and I barely had to use cover.

To me it's more important that the classes play differently then everyone having the same kill speed.

edit: I'll just throw in, that I'll agree with Singularity being less universally applicable class specific ability then others, as you'll want to mix it up with shockwave, throw, pull, warp more often against regular enemies, unless you find a good place to use it as a trap or locking down something big and scary. But it's still a class thats good at control and is easy to use without much twitch involved. It's also the only class that can cause warp explosions without help from squad mates. Couple of seconds longer hold duration for Singularity would probably be able to put it on par with engineer's drone on insanity.

Sentinels are sort of hybrids of all three types, control, stripping and thanks to the armor all out action packed offense, depending on your own taste. 

Modifié par Dannok1234, 15 mars 2010 - 07:52 .

[TheUnusualSuspect]

RamsenC wrote...
 Locking down one elite enemy is simply not enough control. If the drone would at least attack multiple enemies I would be much happier about Engineer.

Engineer + Dominate leads to:

1 enemy locked up by a drone
1 enemy dominated (effectively locked) attacking another enemy (also locked down)
1 area overload locking down any enemies in its blast radius from firing for 6 seconds
1 AI hacking (if synthetics are around too), locking down 1, and attacking another (also locked)
Cryo-blast locking down anything that's stripped
Incinerate making any health'ed enemy dance about patting it out

Am somewhat uncertain about how that is "not enough control".  Sure, maybe you just meant the drone all by itself not being that great, but to have it attack and lock down 2+ enemies would make the Engineer capable of locking down an entire battlefield, solo.  The drone is just one more control utility at the Engineer's disposal which elevates the class well beyond the Sentinel's jack-of-all-trades approach.

As an example, in the suicide mission platform fight on Insanity difficulty, I had Miranda glitched, and she was standing atop of cover in plain view from about 10 seconds in.  My Engineer was able to lock down the entire fight sequence well enough that she didn't even so much as lose her shields once.

Now that is control my friend!

[RamsenC]

Yea I meant the drone itself since any class can get dominate and do the same. I guess I don't think having one enemy turn around is interesting enough as a class defining ability. You can also get Incinerate, Overload, Cryo Blast, and almost any other ability from a squad mate. This is why I'm putting so much importance on the class specific power being better.



For the Collector platforms try Reave>Pul Field >Warp and watch all the enemies explode off and die. Gatsby made a video with warp explosions on that section and it's far better than locking enemies down with Dominate and Drone. Still I can't argue with Drone vs Harbinger, makes him no threat at all.

[TheUnusualSuspect]

RamsenC wrote...

Still I can't argue with Drone vs Harbinger, makes him no threat at all.

Yeah, I was about to say this, until you wrote it.  IMO, the drone it worth it for this alone.  Name another class that can lock down Harbinger (without a dominated enemy near to him which is a bit hit and miss).

Hadn't tried the area reave, area pull, unstable warp bomb yet.  Sounds lethal so long as you can get them all into the initial reave zone.  While not quite as fast, what I was doing was:

Samara reave to take off armor off one
Miranda warp off another
Dominate one of those which is now stripped
Drone onto Harbinger
Samara throws a stripped collector off the edge
Dominated collector attacks harbinger or neighbour, Miranda/Samara spam reave/warp on Harbinger
Dominate wears off, throw collector off edge

If there's another collector in there Overload him so he can't shoot you, and focus on him while Harby and the dominated one are busy with each other/drone.

It's not as awesome as a area reave/area pull/unstable warp catching them all at once, but it works against scattered enemies and takes them all out within about 30 secs, with maybe only 5 or 6 stray bullets heading the team's way.  Repeat for each platform that flies in.  The whole platform battle was over in under 3 minutes or so.

[Karstedt]

@Gatsby: I think your assessment of the direction they wanted to take this game is right on the money. I hope however that you don't give up your vids and tell everyone to play as it was intended. Because I for one, am not a big fan of the gun focused shooter style direction they went. Your vids are very valuable to those of us trying to adapt to fewer and far less deadly powers with universal cool downs and without the gun damage to compensate. I don't want to play as they intended dammit!

[Sabresandiego]

This is late so this post will be very short. Although this game is great, it would be better if it was some kind of cross between world of warcraft and call of duty. They are two of the best games in the genre of shooters and rpg. I think they should remove squad ability control entirely, but also remove the ridiculous global cooldown so that shepard himself can use a multitude of abilities. Abilities would have to be rebalanced ofcourse but I dislike how ME2 often amounts to spamming your best ability over and over with some squad combos thrown in. I would much rather prefer to be able to combo using shepards abilities alone, and have no ability control on my squad at all.

-Remove global cooldown completely
-Give every ability independant cooldowns or category cooldowns
-Balance ability and category cooldowns to prevent imbalanced gameplay

Modifié par Sabresandiego, 15 mars 2010 - 11:03 .

[sedrikhcain]

Average Gatsby wrote...

The Presentation: Link to the Presentation (its pretty cool)

Mass Effect 2 is my favorite game. If my 50+ guide videos don't show that, nothing will. I've done many play throughs, with both genders, both paragon/renegade, on every difficulty from normal to NG+ insanity. Reading the presentation notes from Christina Norman on the game play design of mass effect 2 has made me think about a few things, a few things that are slightly confusing.

It's clear that the Mass Effect team is full of very smart and very self-aware people. They saw that Mass Effect 1 had some gameplay problems. In an effort to make a Shooter/RPG hybrid, they ended up making a game with shooter elements that in their mind and in the mind of critics, were not up to the standards they wanted. Abilities, particularly biotic abilities, seemed to provide the player who knew how to use them with far less of a challenge than those who played classes that were more focused on shooting.

With that in mind, the team approached Mass Effect 2 from a fix shooting first. And fix it they did. Mass Effect 2 is a fantastic shooting game. No matter what class a player selects, she or he will experience a well-designed, effective, shooter.

In the presentation, very little is mentioned about abilities. Universal cooldowns are briefly mentioned, and that they were designed to speed up the game play. But beyond that, not much else. I am not naive enough to say that abilities were somehow an after-thought. Not as powerful does not mean not thought out. Abilities were very much thought out; what people don't like are the conclusions that seem to have been reached about them.

From the presentation, its clear that the designers wanted to make a game that was more challenging and more player skill based than Mass Effect 1. To that end, they seem, from the presentation and the game, to have determined two things: 1) Using an ability does not take as much skill as having to aim and fire a weapon, so it should not be rewarded as much as aiming and firing a weapon, and 2) Abilities in total must be used less frequently (in total) and do less damage than weapons, because the player should be rewarded for skill and not button mashing.

Look at the overall most useful abilities in the game: Adrenaline Rush, Cloak, Tech Armor, and Charge. All of these abilities have one thing in common: They help the player do more damage using guns, either directly or indirectly. Combat Drone and Singularity also assist in shooting to some extent because they can knock any target out of cover.

It works. Mass Effect 2 is faster paced, more dynamic, more fun, and all around, from a game play perspective

From the nature of how abilities target and work in the mass effect universe, it makes sense.

An Issue with ME2:
So why am I confused?

After watching this presentation, I'm forced to ask myself a question: What is the, from a game play perspective, point role of the Adept or Engineer, the ability based classes?

Sentinel is deceptive: It is really more of an inverse soldier using abilities instead of ammo powers, but is still, from the beginning, set up to use guns since it can stay out of cover and take so much punishment.

Back to my question: What is the point of these two classes? They don't make any sense. The game is a shooter, but the Adept and Engineer offer almost nothing for the player in terms of shooting assistance. They have abilities, but abilities are not intended to kill necessarily, they are intended to assist in gun use, but that assistance is far less powerful than the other classes gun-assisting abilities.

What they have is crowd control effects. However, all classes possess extensive crowd control measures already, through their guns and ammo types. If any class can perform that crowd control role, then what is the role of the Adept or Engineer in a fight?

This is why no ability does much damage on its own to health, which enemies have far more of than defense. If they did, then players could simply hit buttons without doing much in the aiming or taking risk by exposing herself or his self to enemy fire.

Here is An Illustration of the major shift between ME1 and ME2 when it comes to thinking about class gameplay, as evidenced by certain comments in the presentation. NOTE: This is NOT contained in the presentation. I came up with this entirely on my own from drawing some of the comments made about ME1 vs ME2 to their conclusion.

ME1, The triangle: (Intended play style, shooter/RPG hybird)
                           Soldier
                               /   \\\\
                             /       \\\\
                          /             \\\\
                  Vanguard   Infiltrator
                       /                    \\\\
                     /                        \\\\
                   /                             \\\\
               Adept---Sentinel---Engineer
The Vanguard and Infiltrator are hybrids of the adept and engineer playstyle, the sentinel is a hybrid of the engineer and Adept.

The Squarish Mass Effect 2 (intended playstyle, shooter with some ability/rpg elements).

Soldier--------------Vanguard
      |                                 |         \\\\
      |                                 |          \\\\
      |                                 |            Adept
      |                                 |           /
      |                                 |         / 
Infiltrator-------------Sentinel
            \\\\                   /
              \\\\                /
               Engineer

The Infiltrator is not a hybrid of the Engineer and soldier, it is a different way to play a gun heavy class. Same with the Vanguard, and even the Sentinel. The Adept and Engineer derive their abilities from those other two classes, minus ammo powers, minus weapons training, plus a strong CC. 

The presentation, more than anything, showed me why my videos are getting views: Its not because there is something inherently more interesting about Engineers and Adepts, its because the game design is not well suited to their strengths, and because of this, they are inherently more challenging to play effectively. They have to use guns they don't have; and their strengths in abilities are greatly diminished because abilities are secondary to gun use, by intention and design.

Now, one particular ability combination is extraordinarily strong, the Warp Explosion. And it makes sense why: If the player does it herself or his self, it will take some time to set up, since defenses must be penetrated, and if the player chooses to use allies, that requires some amount of forethought and skill to effectively time everything together, for which the player then receives the appropriate reward of increased effectiveness. However, this is the only case. In addition, this combo is not unique to any class, since squad mates can do the entire action themselves. Adepts, sentinels, and vanguards can all have a direct role in the damage, but just because the adept can either perform the setup or the detonation does not really mean it is substantially better than the other classes at using this ability.

Much of this has been said before. I saw the shortcomings of the classes while making the guide videos, but I persisted. I even did the entire suicide mission with no guns using my Adept. However, this presentation has made me realize that ultimately, teaching players to use abilities more is contrary to the entire design of the game. I'm essentially teaching people how to make a square fit in a circle. I want to play a game how its intended, and now as I look at my videos, I kind of want to go back, delete them all, and tell people to just get better at aiming. These classes simply don't make sense when looked at in context of the game.

Let me say that I did not want an all ability, no guns game for the Adept or Engineer. Far from it. From what I've played, it seems like the game has arrived and very good and powerful and unique skills for 4 of the 6 classes, all centered around increasing gun use. Ability based classes should have to shoot their guns, as Shepard is a soldier. However, they shouldn't have to shoot their guns as often or nearly as often as a a guns heavy class. As it stands, an Adept or Engineer player who wants to push their class to its peak has to essentially play like a guns-centered class, but without the benefit of powerful gun-assisting powers.

Also, don't think that I am somehow angry or bitter or that I don't find the engineer or adept fun. I think they are a blast to play. That doesn't mean they don't have a weaknesses significant enough to point out, and significant enough that its something that BioWare may want to at least talk about for Mass Effect 3.

One Solution for ME3 (out of many viable possibilities):

The problem can be summarized like this: Abilities are too easy to use and should not be rewarded as much for their use, however, this causes the ability heavy classes to be underpowered and not mesh well with the game design.

The answer could be in some additional element of aimed powers.

Think about this: Why is it that a throw, a warp, a pull, an incinerate, all possess the qualities of a super accurate heat seeking missile?

From an RP perspective, this makes no sense: How can an adept, barely seeing a target out of the corner of her or his eye, pop around that corner and instantly perfectly curve a warp at a target. Why can an engineer hit one button on her or his omni-tool and provided an enemy is somewhere in front, instantly overload their shields?

From a gameplay perspective, this power has to be weak. It would make the game incredibly easy otherwise, so therefore the killing power must be stripped.

But what if that wasn't how powers work? What if the player actually had to Aim a throw or a warp or an incinerate?

How this would work in game:
Shepard pops out from cover. The player then hits the ability button and holds it. A line appears from the player out straight in front, which can be curved or not, depending on the ability.

Suddenly an ability takes on the skill of use that a weapon does, which allows it to play a primary instead of a secondary role.

Lets take overload for example; right now, its an instant cast, quick hit ability. Lets try to preserve that aspect while adding some difficulty and some thought. Shepard selects the overload power, similar to how the weapons switch but it is instantaneous or near instantaneous. Shepard then emerges from cover and aims the overload at a nearby geth. A faint blue line emerges from the omnitool and paints the geth. Shepard then fires the ability. Instead of it instantly stripping shields, the player has to sustain the fire button. She or he can then sustain the power for a maximum of 3 seconds, but if the power is ended at any time, the player must wait 6 seconds before any other omni-tool ability can be used again. Or conversely, the player must charge the power for 2 seconds before it instantly springs and smashes the geth.

The Engineer who has taken the same risks as the soldier in exposure, and who faces the same challenge of aiming, can now be rewarded with the same kind of damage against the geth that a soldier with disruptor ammo would have.

Aimed powers result in a number of things: 1) A new, innovative method of playing games, and a new challenge for developers 2) A dynamic and exciting way to play any class 3) The feeling that no one class, because of the way it plays, needs to be weaker or stronger because they all are faced with more equitable challenges.

Therefore, all of the good things the team wanted to keep in Mass Effect 2 can be preserved, while the team also shore up the weaknesses pointed out in the GDC presentation.

I apologize for the length of this post. I know that this section of the forums is filled with a more thoughtful crowd and I didn't want to dumb anything down. I also know that BioWare does listen and read fan feedback, and I felt that I shouldn't put something out there that was dumbed down or simplified. Thank you for reading.

This is going to sound like a snarky response but it's not meant to be...
 
What exactly is the problem? I could summarize your post, in the main, thusly: There are six classes in this shooter game, two of them are not gun-heavy classes. These two "gun-light" classes offer two different ways to play the game and are lots of fun, and I find this troubling.

Does that sound reasonable to you? Seriously, what is the problem?