Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
No, its not random, you get a message when you enter a system thats near the mission they want you to do. But still, there's a big leap between that and "Scan every planet in every system to find any significiant number of missions".
Also, whats this press the light up controller thing? That must be a 360 thing, the PC minigame in ME1 was this -
and yeah, maybe from a purely gameplay perspective, standard sort of reloading is better but I liked the way ME1 was unique in that way, you had to approach combat differently, at least until you upgraded the heat system into irrelevance.
Like the upper Afterlife track. The lower one was easy to find in the game data. I don't remember running across the one you're talking about either when I dug through the easily convertible stuff.
amb_omghub_music_lounge.ogg under wwise_omghub_streaming. Or, more easily, YouTube. Despite being a song from the 90s, the ME2 one is the best quality YT.
-Better decryption minigame. I know the little triangle gets tedious after a while, but I'd sooner do thirty of those than try to do that stupid circuit-matching thing in ME2. The code segment one wasn't too bad but FUCK that little circuit piece of shit. Not even an option to bypass it with some resource like ME1 had.
Definitely this. That triangle game could be conquered in a couple of seconds, whereas the bypass game means mousing back and forth a lot more. The worst part is the bypass game is the one that's required to advance most of the time.
Also, you forgot (mostly) skippable cutscenes in ME2.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
I'm the opposite.
I liked the circuit because it was over quick. The code on the other hand took to long unless you got all the right code in the first few scrolls.
In other words.....what they already did in BG 2? :P
That pretty much goes for everything, honestly. If all their games were just that...but different, there'd be nothing to improve.
this is a few pages late, but freedom to include more character interaction goes up exponentially in a game without 100% voice-acted lines. Its very easy to allow infinite character development, and things like party member interactions with each other, when all you have to do is type the lines. In a fully voice-acted game, the costs for things like that start to add up.
That's not an argument against character interaction, that is an argument against voice acting.
If it comes down to it I'd rather have voice acting.
Also, fuck the ME1 minigame. Minigames should not be impossible to beat a quarter of the time.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
/Niles Crane On
What a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my obviously superior intellect !
/Niles Crane Off
I never had a problem with either hacking game; they both require a bit of thought but are over quickly and are a nice change of pace. The only hack which grew tiresome was the big double-door on Horizon
which you hacked to reach the broadcast antenna. If you died during the first round of the battle, you reverted back to the autosave just before hacking the door. Re-hacking the same door five or six times gets pretty old.
-Better decryption minigame. I know the little triangle gets tedious after a while, but I'd sooner do thirty of those than try to do that stupid circuit-matching thing in ME2. The code segment one wasn't too bad but FUCK that little circuit piece of shit. Not even an option to bypass it with some resource like ME1 had.
Have to say I prefer the circuit bypass game to the old console Simon game. Sure it was quicker, but just pressing matching buttons on the controller seemed so trivial and unrelated to the game that it ruined the immersion. At least with the new mini-games it seems like I'm doing some spy shit.
ME3 needs to have a system wherein every time you beat the game, you can buy an item that bypasses a mini-game. So if you beat the game once, you can buy a Auto-Code Hacker, or Auto-Bypass Module. Beat the game again and you can buy something else. The Long Service Award was an excellent idea, but it should keep getting bigger every time you beat the game until you don't have to do any of the mini-games or resource gathering if you don't want to after, like, your third time through. PC players don't have to put up with scanning but us poor console schmucks are stuck.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Have to say I prefer the circuit bypass game to the old console Simon game. Sure it was quicker, but just pressing matching buttons on the controller seemed so trivial and unrelated to the game that it ruined the immersion. At least with the new mini-games it seems like I'm doing some spy shit.
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
ME3 needs to have a system wherein every time you beat the game, you can buy an item that bypasses a mini-game. So if you beat the game once, you can buy a Auto-Code Hacker, or Auto-Bypass Module. Beat the game again and you can buy something else.
THIS.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
THIS.
That was why you brought Tali on every mission, because she could hack a rusty bicycle pump. Turned out that wasn't necessary because I soon had enough Omni-Gel to float an aircraft carrier from converting all of the useless crap the game kept dumping into my inventory.
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
THIS.
If the minigames are excruciating enough that they reward you with a way to skip them, maybe they should just take them out.
That was why you brought Tali on every mission, because she could hack a rusty bicycle pump. Turned out that wasn't necessary because I soon had enough Omni-Gel to float an aircraft carrier from converting all of the useless crap the game kept dumping into my inventory.
Speaking of which, in the category of things ME2 did right, getting rid of omni-gel falls somewhere in my top 10. That had to be one of the most bipolar gaming mechanics ever, you either have too much of the shit and you don't have to do anything lock-related for the rest of the game, or you have too little, and when you go out on a Mako mission, you're fucked.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Successful hacks in ME1 did you give experience, but I found Shepard leveling so quickly that slopping omni-gel around was no big loss.
I do agree, tho, that removing omni goop was a great idea. It has all the signs of something that was built early as a neato idea and kept in the game even when the need for it had gone.
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
THIS.
If the minigames are excruciating enough that they reward you with a way to skip them, maybe they should just take them out.
it's like mineral mining
fine the first time, tedious the nth time
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
THIS.
If the minigames are excruciating enough that they reward you with a way to skip them, maybe they should just take them out.
It's hard to argue with that. Maybe they should just handle it like when you are restarting the engines on the Broken Arrow. You just have to keep holding down the action button for a few seconds until a bar that says like "BYPASSING" fills up and if you get shot you have to start over. Except maybe have an animation for when you're doing it, like you see Shepard put away his gun and start fiddling with his Omni-Tool while the bar is filling up.
I do like the idea of having certain teammates able to open harder locks for you, but I don't like the idea of always having to bring a techie along for fear I'm going to miss out on some credits or resources.
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
I wouldn't say it's "fine" the first time out, I'd say more like "tolerable". Bioware should really make an effort to weed out any activity wherein the player would never have an opportunity to say "Holy shit, that was awesome!!!"
how about each char has an unlocking skill rank, and doing more unlocks improves it, and if you're above the level for a lock you just get a 2-3 second progress bar that is interruptible, and if you're below it you have to actually do the mini game.
I think that would save the whole "omg I'm hacking into the main frame" feel for when it's important, like the door that opens the final room of an area, or when doing something really crafty, and doesn't dillute it by making you "hack" open every chest you come across.
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
I wouldn't say it's "fine" the first time out, I'd say more like "tolerable". Bioware should really make an effort to weed out any activity wherein the player would never have an opportunity to say "Holy shit, that was awesome!!!"
mining is awesome, the first time
nice music, nice sounds, and you get something good out of it (minerals for research upgrades)
but the second time through it's exactly the same task, unlike the combat or the dialogue, so that's when it wears you down. same with hacking.
things don't need to be "holy shit awesome" 24/7, because having downtime inbetween missions to fiddle and research and buy stuff accentuates the big moments
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Like the upper Afterlife track. The lower one was easy to find in the game data. I don't remember running across the one you're talking about either when I dug through the easily convertible stuff.
amb_omghub_music_lounge.ogg under wwise_omghub_streaming. Or, more easily, YouTube. Despite being a song from the 90s, the ME2 one is the best quality YT.
Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.afc->ogg is lower Afterlife; there is no file in the Steam version named amb_omghub_music_lounge.afc. If you've got it, mind shooting me a copy?
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
I wouldn't say it's "fine" the first time out, I'd say more like "tolerable". Bioware should really make an effort to weed out any activity wherein the player would never have an opportunity to say "Holy shit, that was awesome!!!"
mining is awesome, the first time
nice music, nice sounds, and you get something good out of it (minerals for research upgrades)
but the second time through it's exactly the same task, unlike the combat or the dialogue, so that's when it wears you down. same with hacking.
things don't need to be "holy shit awesome" 24/7, because having downtime inbetween missions to fiddle and research and buy stuff accentuates the big moments
This is exactly why I won't be playing through the game a second time. It's already pretty bad when you need ~200k of each mineral to get all the upgrades. If they let you keep them or made them free on the NG+ that would be a different story. I wouldn't even care if I had to find or buy them again as long as it applied without me having to go mine minerals.
how about each char has an unlocking skill rank, and doing more unlocks improves it, and if you're above the level for a lock you just get a 2-3 second progress bar that is interruptible, and if you're below it you have to actually do the mini game.
I think that would save the whole "omg I'm hacking into the main frame" feel for when it's important, like the door that opens the final room of an area, or when doing something really crafty, and doesn't dillute it by making you "hack" open every chest you come across.
Interesting idea, but you'd probably want to roll the hacking skill into everyone's passive skill instead of being determined by the number of locks they've already opened. Or maybe roll it into the Overload and AI Hacking abilities so if you max out Overload that character can bypass medium difficulty locks, and if you max out AI Hacking, then that character can bypass anything.
The whole mini-game thing still seems like a punishment though due to it not being exciting at all. I'm leaning more and more towards the "get rid of them" camp. Or have them only pop up once or twice in situations where you only have a few seconds to do the bypass before another wave of enemies show up.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
I wouldn't say it's "fine" the first time out, I'd say more like "tolerable". Bioware should really make an effort to weed out any activity wherein the player would never have an opportunity to say "Holy shit, that was awesome!!!"
mining is awesome, the first time
nice music, nice sounds, and you get something good out of it (minerals for research upgrades)
but the second time through it's exactly the same task, unlike the combat or the dialogue, so that's when it wears you down. same with hacking.
things don't need to be "holy shit awesome" 24/7, because having downtime inbetween missions to fiddle and research and buy stuff accentuates the big moments
This is exactly why I won't be playing through the game a second time. It's already pretty bad when you need ~200k of each mineral to get all the upgrades. If they let you keep them or made them free on the NG+ that would be a different story. I wouldn't even care if I had to find or buy them again as long as it applied without me having to go mine minerals.
If you've got a PC you can cheat yourself more mins quite easily. If you don't...um...I dunno. Is there a way to transfer your game to the PC so you can edit the save file and then transfer it back?
if you don't, you get more than enough minerals from the missions for all the vital upgrades
it's not like the game is impossible without the +10% assault rifle damage upgrade
It kinda sucks on insane when you don't have the damage upgrades tho'. Is there enough to at least get the headshot/critical hit/extra ammo/etc., upgrades? 'cuz I'm thinking maybe no.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
ME3 should just start by asking you if you like stuff that isn't fun.
Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.afc->ogg is lower Afterlife; there is no file in the Steam version named amb_omghub_music_lounge.afc. If you've got it, mind shooting me a copy?
There are multiple oggs per afc. Use Gibbed's audio extractor if you're not already. PMed a copy just to be on the safe side.
if you don't, you get more than enough minerals from the missions for all the vital upgrades
it's not like the game is impossible without the +10% assault rifle damage upgrade
It kinda sucks on insane when you don't have the damage upgrades tho'. Is there enough to at least get the headshot/critical hit/extra ammo/etc., upgrades? 'cuz I'm thinking maybe no.
you have to unlock insanity though, so you'd get 50k minerals that way. that's easily enough for a few damage upgrades in some choice weapons or some shield/health upgrades
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
It is only fitting that this thread hit 100 pages and roll over to a new thread on Kasumi Day.
Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.afc->ogg is lower Afterlife; there is no file in the Steam version named amb_omghub_music_lounge.afc. If you've got it, mind shooting me a copy?
There are multiple oggs per afc. Use Gibbed's audio extractor if you're not already. PMed a copy just to be on the safe side.
ME3 should just start by asking you if you like stuff that isn't fun.
If you say yes, then mini-games are turned on.
Q: What was your favorite game?
1: METAL GEAR SOLID 1
2: METAL GEAR SOLID 2
Ah...I had a straight audio extractor. It probably just grabbed the first ogg out of each afc.
*mutter* Thanks for the help!
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
I thought the hacking things in ME2 were fairly well done. I just wish there had been a few more different ones so that they wouldn't seem so repetitive. There are very few things worse than repetitive mini-games.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I thought the hacking things in ME2 were fairly well done. I just wish there had been a few more different ones so that they wouldn't seem so repetitive. There are very few things worse than repetitive mini-games.
Unskippable quick time events that kill you if you fail them?
I cannot fathom why unskippable cut scenes still exist. I'm glad this game is about 90% skippable (as far as cutscenes go) but what the hell is taking everyone so long to implement the ability to skip them? Especially with games like this where you will play through it multiple times.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I cannot fathom why unskippable cut scenes still exist. I'm glad this game is about 90% skippable (as far as cutscenes go) but what the hell is taking everyone so long to implement the ability to skip them? Especially with games like this where you will play through it multiple times.
Well, in most games it's a "good" way to pad the game's duration, I'd imagine. Action games and such especially.
Posts
Also, whats this press the light up controller thing? That must be a 360 thing, the PC minigame in ME1 was this -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NlyIYNeM5s
and yeah, maybe from a purely gameplay perspective, standard sort of reloading is better but I liked the way ME1 was unique in that way, you had to approach combat differently, at least until you upgraded the heat system into irrelevance.
and you really didnt have to approach combat differently, it was shoot shoot shoot, wait 5 seconds until the gun cools down, repeat.
combat and mechanics are so much more in me2.
amb_omghub_music_lounge.ogg under wwise_omghub_streaming. Or, more easily, YouTube. Despite being a song from the 90s, the ME2 one is the best quality YT.
Definitely this. That triangle game could be conquered in a couple of seconds, whereas the bypass game means mousing back and forth a lot more. The worst part is the bypass game is the one that's required to advance most of the time.
Also, you forgot (mostly) skippable cutscenes in ME2.
I liked the circuit because it was over quick. The code on the other hand took to long unless you got all the right code in the first few scrolls.
If it comes down to it I'd rather have voice acting.
Also, fuck the ME1 minigame. Minigames should not be impossible to beat a quarter of the time.
What a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my obviously superior intellect !
/Niles Crane Off
I never had a problem with either hacking game; they both require a bit of thought but are over quickly and are a nice change of pace. The only hack which grew tiresome was the big double-door on Horizon
which you hacked to reach the broadcast antenna. If you died during the first round of the battle, you reverted back to the autosave just before hacking the door. Re-hacking the same door five or six times gets pretty old.
Have to say I prefer the circuit bypass game to the old console Simon game. Sure it was quicker, but just pressing matching buttons on the controller seemed so trivial and unrelated to the game that it ruined the immersion. At least with the new mini-games it seems like I'm doing some spy shit.
ME3 needs to have a system wherein every time you beat the game, you can buy an item that bypasses a mini-game. So if you beat the game once, you can buy a Auto-Code Hacker, or Auto-Bypass Module. Beat the game again and you can buy something else. The Long Service Award was an excellent idea, but it should keep getting bigger every time you beat the game until you don't have to do any of the mini-games or resource gathering if you don't want to after, like, your third time through. PC players don't have to put up with scanning but us poor console schmucks are stuck.
No they don't...they're just there to waste time. Which is why the one that is over quickest is the most preferable.
I still wish they'd kept the old ME1 system, where if you had a team member with a high enough tech power, you could just bypass the game entirely. Yeah, they had to do away with it because of how they changed the team-building mechanics, but it got you out of the "LOL MINIGAME" bullshit. It's not fun, it's tedious as fuck, and it breaks the pace so bad.
Honestly, I'd rather just have them take it out in the next game.
THIS.
If the minigames are excruciating enough that they reward you with a way to skip them, maybe they should just take them out.
Speaking of which, in the category of things ME2 did right, getting rid of omni-gel falls somewhere in my top 10. That had to be one of the most bipolar gaming mechanics ever, you either have too much of the shit and you don't have to do anything lock-related for the rest of the game, or you have too little, and when you go out on a Mako mission, you're fucked.
I do agree, tho, that removing omni goop was a great idea. It has all the signs of something that was built early as a neato idea and kept in the game even when the need for it had gone.
it's like mineral mining
fine the first time, tedious the nth time
in a game designed to be played multiple times, the ability to skip tedious conversations, hacks, and mineral farming that you have done before could really be useful
It's hard to argue with that. Maybe they should just handle it like when you are restarting the engines on the Broken Arrow. You just have to keep holding down the action button for a few seconds until a bar that says like "BYPASSING" fills up and if you get shot you have to start over. Except maybe have an animation for when you're doing it, like you see Shepard put away his gun and start fiddling with his Omni-Tool while the bar is filling up.
I do like the idea of having certain teammates able to open harder locks for you, but I don't like the idea of always having to bring a techie along for fear I'm going to miss out on some credits or resources.
I wouldn't say it's "fine" the first time out, I'd say more like "tolerable". Bioware should really make an effort to weed out any activity wherein the player would never have an opportunity to say "Holy shit, that was awesome!!!"
how about each char has an unlocking skill rank, and doing more unlocks improves it, and if you're above the level for a lock you just get a 2-3 second progress bar that is interruptible, and if you're below it you have to actually do the mini game.
I think that would save the whole "omg I'm hacking into the main frame" feel for when it's important, like the door that opens the final room of an area, or when doing something really crafty, and doesn't dillute it by making you "hack" open every chest you come across.
mining is awesome, the first time
nice music, nice sounds, and you get something good out of it (minerals for research upgrades)
but the second time through it's exactly the same task, unlike the combat or the dialogue, so that's when it wears you down. same with hacking.
things don't need to be "holy shit awesome" 24/7, because having downtime inbetween missions to fiddle and research and buy stuff accentuates the big moments
Wwise_OmgHub_Streaming.afc->ogg is lower Afterlife; there is no file in the Steam version named amb_omghub_music_lounge.afc.
This is exactly why I won't be playing through the game a second time. It's already pretty bad when you need ~200k of each mineral to get all the upgrades. If they let you keep them or made them free on the NG+ that would be a different story. I wouldn't even care if I had to find or buy them again as long as it applied without me having to go mine minerals.
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Interesting idea, but you'd probably want to roll the hacking skill into everyone's passive skill instead of being determined by the number of locks they've already opened. Or maybe roll it into the Overload and AI Hacking abilities so if you max out Overload that character can bypass medium difficulty locks, and if you max out AI Hacking, then that character can bypass anything.
The whole mini-game thing still seems like a punishment though due to it not being exciting at all. I'm leaning more and more towards the "get rid of them" camp. Or have them only pop up once or twice in situations where you only have a few seconds to do the bypass before another wave of enemies show up.
If you've got a PC you can cheat yourself more mins quite easily. If you don't...um...I dunno. Is there a way to transfer your game to the PC so you can edit the save file and then transfer it back?
it's not like the game is impossible without the +10% assault rifle damage upgrade
It kinda sucks on insane when you don't have the damage upgrades tho'. Is there enough to at least get the headshot/critical hit/extra ammo/etc., upgrades? 'cuz I'm thinking maybe no.
If you say yes, then mini-games are turned on.
There are multiple oggs per afc. Use Gibbed's audio extractor if you're not already. PMed a copy just to be on the safe side.
Q: What was your favorite game?
1: METAL GEAR SOLID 1
2: METAL GEAR SOLID 2
you have to unlock insanity though, so you'd get 50k minerals that way. that's easily enough for a few damage upgrades in some choice weapons or some shield/health upgrades
I got tired of ME1's but ME2's was much better and I like it.
*shot in the foot*
Yeah. There's only a few areas (like Garrus's loyalty quest) where it feels like they overdid it. Otherwise it takes 10 seconds and whatever.
Ah...I had a straight audio extractor. It probably just grabbed the first ogg out of each afc.
*mutter* Thanks for the help!
Unskippable quick time events that kill you if you fail them?
Well, in most games it's a "good" way to pad the game's duration, I'd imagine. Action games and such especially.
both at least tried to give you the impression of pantomiming the hack, rather than Concentric Ring Frogger for EVERYTHING.
!!
i just remembered - does ME2 have a towers of hanoi segment? i don't remember one.
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