I was going to just say a big "Fuck you" to the end of the Horizon mission as an Engineer on Insanity (although it is hilarious to tease Scions with Combat Drones. They keep turning to them, to me, to them, to me and just give up attacking). Especially the Praetorian. Fuck that thing.
I'm really terrified of this part
I just went through the IFF on Veteran and the scion/husk combo was a huge pain in the ass
I honestly don't think I'll make it past Horizon on insanity
I was going to just say a big "Fuck you" to the end of the Horizon mission as an Engineer on Insanity (although it is hilarious to tease Scions with Combat Drones. They keep turning to them, to me, to them, to me and just give up attacking). Especially the Praetorian. Fuck that thing.
I'm really terrified of this part
I just went through the IFF on Veteran and the scion/husk combo was a huge pain in the ass
I honestly don't think I'll make it past Horizon on insanity
fuck, I'm afraid even to recruit archangel
I am not very good at videogames
Maybe you should play them on difficulty levels that don't scare you?
Brovid Hasselsmof on
0
DunxcoShould get a suitNever skips breakfastRegistered Userregular
I was going to just say a big "Fuck you" to the end of the Horizon mission as an Engineer on Insanity (although it is hilarious to tease Scions with Combat Drones. They keep turning to them, to me, to them, to me and just give up attacking). Especially the Praetorian. Fuck that thing.
I'm really terrified of this part
I just went through the IFF on Veteran and the scion/husk combo was a huge pain in the ass
I honestly don't think I'll make it past Horizon on insanity
fuck, I'm afraid even to recruit archangel
I am not very good at videogames
Maybe you should play them on difficulty levels that don't scare you?
It's not hard, it's just time-consuming and there's incredibly small windows for screw-ups. Too many and well, you're in the dirt. Horizon took me a good 30 minutes to get to the final gauntlet, and 20 minutes to clear it because of the Praetorian. Fuck that guy. Glad there's only one more left to fight.
Dunxco on
0
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
I think I may have hit the threshold where my character's power level compensates for my sheer lack of skill. (This is on insanity, by the way.)
I'm dying far less. 1-2 shots from the Widowmaker kills everything. My teammates seem less stupid, and more able to handle themselves. I had a little trouble on the Collector ship, died a few times on the
flying discs
as well as
to the praetorian
but otherwise I didn't have too many problems.
It's possible I'm getting better, but probably not.
GoodKingJayIII on
Battletag: Threeve#1501
PSN: Threeve703
0
DVGNo. 1 Honor StudentNether Institute, Evil AcademyRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
About to head to Horizon with my FemShep on Insanity. Not looking forward to Armored Husks.
DVG on
Diablo 3 - DVG#1857
0
DunxcoShould get a suitNever skips breakfastRegistered Userregular
About to head to Horizon with my FemShep on Insanity. Not looking forward to Armored Husks.
Armoured Husks aren't that big of a threat though. You're guaranteed to either have a means to deal with armour (either by yourself or through a teammate, ammo or powers) After that they're remarkably fragile. You realise a rank 1 Cryo Blast will kill a Husk on Insanity if it has no armour? Hit it once, and by the time it's completely slowed down, it just shatters.
Thanks for help with the loading times, shows me for not reading the OP.
Finding insanity with engineer absolutely goosing amazing. Dove you were right, until insanity everything is just playing around the edges with the combat. For the core of the game insanity makes it much better - the feeling of beating Mordin's recruitment with an early character is awesome. Drone is actually really useful - the amazing cooldown time means it can pretty much be constantly on, distracting rushing or tough enemies. Loving it.
On normal with my sentinel I love husks. Throw field is a one-shot kill on them, and you can get like five at once. The best is aiming a throw at an abomination so that it gets shot into some of its husk buddies and kills all of them when it explodes. My record for dead husks with one throw shot is around 7 or 8. The power also recharges in a second or two.
It's so much fun that at the side mission with the infinite husks I just killed them by the dozen for a really long time before I finally ended the mission. It never gets old. Even better when you have a party member with throw field as well.
Thanks for help with the loading times, shows me for not reading the OP.
Finding insanity with engineer absolutely goosing amazing. Dove you were right, until insanity everything is just playing around the edges with the combat. For the core of the game insanity makes it much better - the feeling of beating Mordin's recruitment with an early character is awesome. Drone is actually really useful - the amazing cooldown time means it can pretty much be constantly on, distracting rushing or tough enemies. Loving it.
High five.
BlackDove on
0
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
My tactic with praetorians is to find a piece of scenery like a pillar or big pile of boxes, and move around it in circles. The bug thing follows really slowly. Every time I've played it just ignores my team mates and follows me, so while I'm dodging they're shooting it. Last time I did Horizon I was trying to make the fight last so I could hear the rumoured funny line that EDI apparently says, so I was just walking round and round and round, not bothering to shoot it. But Jack and Grunt ended up talking it down too early anyway.
Are they any more intelligent above veteran? Cos I hated praetorians on my first run, but now I've figured this out they are actually one of the easiest things in the game.
I almost feel like the difficulties should've been defaulted up a few difficulties, like Hardcore should've been Veteran (or even Normal). And not in the "what the fuck pussies" elitist prick sort of way. But in that I think people would actually enjoy the game more for it. Like I feel Dragon Age's Normal difficulty was harder than Mass Effect's Hardcore.
Just completed my Insanity run and I swear it was a blast. Never bullshit hard either. Just genuinely challenging.
I finally finished my first playthrough. Paragon Male Vanguard Shep. I romanced Miranda. She brought me back to life after all
End Game Spoilers:
I only lost Mordin. I didn't pick him for any of the specialist or leader roles so I guess I only lost him because I didn't have all the upgrades?? I was missing only a couple damage upgrades, but I had all the ship upgrades.
Overall, I loved the game. Great story, great character development. Not really much of a cliffhanger though, but I don't mind that. Actually kinda welcome that since cliffhangers seem to be over done.
My complaints about this game though have been pretty much been echoed by everyone else though. We all complained that the shooter aspect of ME1 was definitely the weakest part of the game, but I felt like ME2 overcompensated and focused on the shooter at the expense of the RPG. Sure, combat needed to be tweaked. Pinnacle Station made that painfully evident. But did we really need to scrap the whole system and start over?
I mean sure, Mass Effect is a trilogy in terms of story, but gameplay-wise, it was a disappointment to me that it wasn't a trilogy in the vein of the D&D Pool of Radiance trilogy where I imported my character over and continued where I left off gameplay-wise. My only reward for all my time with my ME1 shep was some money and extra levels....big whoop. The evolved power thing was dumb in my opinion, the difference between each choice seemed almost irrelevant in most cases. The only thing that I thought was improved was the whole rock paper scissors system of powers and weapons. It really made you think about who you brought along and using different weapons
as has been said by others, hunting for thermal clips was an annoyance. Resource scanning was obviously stupid. Who honestly thought that would be fun after the first couple planets? Same with buying fuel and probes. Why even have that in there? the cost was almost completely negligible so having to fuel up was pointless as was the "upgrade" to extend the fuel cells. It didn't change anything.
The weapons and upgrade system felt like it was merely tacked on. I mean sure, we all complained about how all the guns in ME1 were the same and only had a few different models shared amongst many different types of guns. Well this new system doesn't seem to be an improvement. There needed to be a lot more variety in weapons and the upgrade system needed to be a lot more meaningful than just generic damage upgrade number X of 5
Same with armor. There seemed to be no real meaningful difference between the armors. Swapping out the various pieces seemed pointless. I stayed with the default N7 armor for most of the game until the Cerberus armor came along and the only reason I switched was because I liked the look. The stats seemed irrelevant. Half the reason I did newgame+ on ME1 was so that I could collect all the various armors. Watching Miranda, Jack and Samara run around in skin tight clothes sure was nice eyecandy, but not being able to armor them up and do what *I* wanted to do with my squad was a disappointment. Also, insert the standard Bioware complaint of why the hell do I recruit this huge squad if I'm only allowed to bring two people along? I mean hell, Dragon Age managed to up the limit a bit. Battles would be so much bigger and epic if I could bring everyone along. Or at the *very least* more than two.
Overall, I still loved the game, but changing the gameplay like they did really soured it for me.
I almost feel like the difficulties should've been defaulted up a few difficulties, like Hardcore should've been Veteran (or even Normal). And not in the "what the fuck pussies" elitist prick sort of way. But in that I think people would actually enjoy the game more for it. Like I feel Dragon Age's Normal difficulty was harder than Mass Effect's Hardcore.
Just completed my Insanity run and I swear it was a blast. Never bullshit hard either. Just genuinely challenging.
I hope you're right that it's challenging but not retarded hard (like DA:O). I'm playing thru on veteran and it's almost too easy. I had to actually check to make sure I didn't put it on normal by accident since I like never die
VkiiSue on
0
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Does anyone know what that funny line EDI says is?
Brovid Hasselsmof on
0
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
I was actually pretty disappointed when they upped PC damage in the first DA:O patch. I liked the difficulty level a little tougher. And this is coming from someone who generally plays games on Normal.
I'm glad that things are generally pretty challenging on Insanity, though I have had to cheese the game one or two times by cheating the AI. Whether that's because I suck or because the section was not balanced properly, I can't really say.
GoodKingJayIII on
Battletag: Threeve#1501
PSN: Threeve703
0
DunxcoShould get a suitNever skips breakfastRegistered Userregular
so it will really just take longer to kill stuff on a harder difficulty? I dunno, nothing in that game is really 'hard' when you can just duck behind cover most of the time. Enemies very rarely actually run up to me and start unloading, rather than hanging back. Does that change at all on harder difficulties?
VkiiSue on
0
DunxcoShould get a suitNever skips breakfastRegistered Userregular
Does anyone know what that funny line EDI says is?
I like to see humans on their knees?
Okay yeah, I was pretty vague there.
I mean on Horizon. Apparently if you take long enough to complete the final fight, she says something amusing. I couldn't make it last long enough to hear it.
That thread's a bit harsh on Jacob. He's not that bad at stripping away armour and regenerative abilities with his ammo type, it's just that he has to get close to do it.
so it will really just take longer to kill stuff on a harder difficulty? I dunno, nothing in that game is really 'hard' when you can just duck behind cover most of the time. Enemies very rarely actually run up to me and start unloading, rather than hanging back. Does that change at all on harder difficulties?
For the most part, yeah. It's absolutely nothing like ME1 though, where you basically had to fire non stop on 1 enemy for 25 seconds before he would even get to half life. Stuff here is mostly killable, provided you play smart with ammo and abilities to strip away protections.
Still though, there's still some bullshit here and there. Stuff like:
-Krogan. If you don't have some way of killing their regen, they're retarded. It takes far more than a clip to take them out, and they regen nearly all that health back by the time you're finished reloading. Not that bad, and they're rare enough to be a fun fight, unless they do what they do best, which leads to...
-Charging enemies. Related to the krogan above, but also any enemy that ends up getting close enough to shoot you through cover. You're basically fucked over. If you do ANYTHING, you will get torn to shreds and die, because you simply will not live for more than 5 seconds out of cover. If you do NOTHING, then you'll obviously, because you can't fight back or run.
-Respawning enemies. This mechanic has no business in Insanity. By Insanity's own rules, you stay in cover or you die. That means clearing out the path as best you can before moving up. But enemies take quite a bit longer to kill. I ran into a situation on one level, where I was a few feet from a corner, with 3 mechs up ahead. Even with focus fire and the proper ammo, by the time I killed one and moved on to the second, another one popped out the corner. I can't move up, because moving up into 3 armored mechs is an instant game over, and I can't clear a path to move up, because they won't stop coming. I burned through 75% of my ammo trying to get through before I got fed up and pulled the rocket launcher out. And even THEN it took close to 10 shots to clear those 3 perpetual mechs enough to move.
-Squad AI. Yup, they're still idiots. You still have to babysit them a lot, but even then there are problem spots. Like when I order someone to cover but they ignore it. Or I put them in cover, but then they just sit there and never attack. When they work, they do their job well enough. But when they don't, you just want to rip your hair out.
Still though, it's not really THAT bad. I'm already on the second set of recruitments, and other than some bits here and there where I wish I could slap a BioWare developer, it's fun, for the most part.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
The one thing I can say about Insanity is it sure makes me aware of my and my squad's powers more. On normal, you can get by never telling your team to do anything. On Insanity, I've found myself relying on Miranda a lot. Letting Jacob use pull to toss enemies to their death from high places is also fun.
However at the same time this is also retarded, because there are too many abilities that can't be used on enemies with protection, and on Insanity, all enemies have protection. Once that protection is gone, they're weak as hell anyway. So it's almost like you just simply don't have half your powers.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
I turned off automatic squad power usage before I even started my first game. I don't know why people let their team use their own powers. It's more fun being tactical and telling them what to do.
Now, that guy says loyalty missions only, but I'd ask someone to make save just before going for the IFF, get Legion, and try doing some N7 missions, just to be sure. We know N7's start and advance the timer, but if not talking to Legion doesn't start the timer in the first place, we might be able to use him for much longer throughout the game than we thought. Worth a shot anyway....
übergeek on
0
Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
I turned off automatic squad power usage before I even started my first game. I don't know why people let their team use their own powers. It's more fun being tactical and telling them what to do.
Because on the 360 it's a pain in the ass to micromanage your squad's abilities and you rather have them fire all their abilities at will than going into the wheel menu every 5 seconds.
I turned off automatic squad power usage before I even started my first game. I don't know why people let their team use their own powers. It's more fun being tactical and telling them what to do.
Agreed, I did the same thing after I realized squadmates were using totally rediculous abilities on the wrong enemies. Makes the game a lot more fun to really get in there and control the fights. Plus it gave me a better grasp of the different powers each person has. Curious to see how well I'll do on an insanity run...
also curious about something: how do you get the incinerate enemies achievement? I use that power a LOT but it seems to give me credit arbitrarily
I've got a question I have never seen covered, sorry if has been answered frequently. I just finished Mass Effect 1 and naturally I want to bring over my character, but I am not quite sure I want to keep my old class. Will there be an option to switch or is character transfer an all or nothing thing?
Posts
Just trying to get people to move on from poop sacks.
I just went through the IFF on Veteran and the scion/husk combo was a huge pain in the ass
I honestly don't think I'll make it past Horizon on insanity
fuck, I'm afraid even to recruit archangel
I am not very good at videogames
Pancake uses green feces for breakfast syrup
Maybe you should play them on difficulty levels that don't scare you?
It's not hard, it's just time-consuming and there's incredibly small windows for screw-ups. Too many and well, you're in the dirt. Horizon took me a good 30 minutes to get to the final gauntlet, and 20 minutes to clear it because of the Praetorian. Fuck that guy. Glad there's only one more left to fight.
I'm dying far less. 1-2 shots from the Widowmaker kills everything. My teammates seem less stupid, and more able to handle themselves. I had a little trouble on the Collector ship, died a few times on the
It's possible I'm getting better, but probably not.
PSN: Threeve703
Finding insanity with engineer absolutely goosing amazing. Dove you were right, until insanity everything is just playing around the edges with the combat. For the core of the game insanity makes it much better - the feeling of beating Mordin's recruitment with an early character is awesome. Drone is actually really useful - the amazing cooldown time means it can pretty much be constantly on, distracting rushing or tough enemies. Loving it.
It's so much fun that at the side mission with the infinite husks I just killed them by the dozen for a really long time before I finally ended the mission. It never gets old. Even better when you have a party member with throw field as well.
High five.
Are they any more intelligent above veteran? Cos I hated praetorians on my first run, but now I've figured this out they are actually one of the easiest things in the game.
Just completed my Insanity run and I swear it was a blast. Never bullshit hard either. Just genuinely challenging.
They have that big sacky flap thing on the bottom and inside are a bunch of husk heads.
Praetorians behave basically the same.
PSN: Threeve703
A Scion is three Husks fused together.
A Praetorian is thirty.
End Game Spoilers:
Overall, I loved the game. Great story, great character development. Not really much of a cliffhanger though, but I don't mind that. Actually kinda welcome that since cliffhangers seem to be over done.
My complaints about this game though have been pretty much been echoed by everyone else though. We all complained that the shooter aspect of ME1 was definitely the weakest part of the game, but I felt like ME2 overcompensated and focused on the shooter at the expense of the RPG. Sure, combat needed to be tweaked. Pinnacle Station made that painfully evident. But did we really need to scrap the whole system and start over?
I mean sure, Mass Effect is a trilogy in terms of story, but gameplay-wise, it was a disappointment to me that it wasn't a trilogy in the vein of the D&D Pool of Radiance trilogy where I imported my character over and continued where I left off gameplay-wise. My only reward for all my time with my ME1 shep was some money and extra levels....big whoop. The evolved power thing was dumb in my opinion, the difference between each choice seemed almost irrelevant in most cases. The only thing that I thought was improved was the whole rock paper scissors system of powers and weapons. It really made you think about who you brought along and using different weapons
as has been said by others, hunting for thermal clips was an annoyance. Resource scanning was obviously stupid. Who honestly thought that would be fun after the first couple planets? Same with buying fuel and probes. Why even have that in there? the cost was almost completely negligible so having to fuel up was pointless as was the "upgrade" to extend the fuel cells. It didn't change anything.
The weapons and upgrade system felt like it was merely tacked on. I mean sure, we all complained about how all the guns in ME1 were the same and only had a few different models shared amongst many different types of guns. Well this new system doesn't seem to be an improvement. There needed to be a lot more variety in weapons and the upgrade system needed to be a lot more meaningful than just generic damage upgrade number X of 5
Same with armor. There seemed to be no real meaningful difference between the armors. Swapping out the various pieces seemed pointless. I stayed with the default N7 armor for most of the game until the Cerberus armor came along and the only reason I switched was because I liked the look. The stats seemed irrelevant. Half the reason I did newgame+ on ME1 was so that I could collect all the various armors. Watching Miranda, Jack and Samara run around in skin tight clothes sure was nice eyecandy, but not being able to armor them up and do what *I* wanted to do with my squad was a disappointment. Also, insert the standard Bioware complaint of why the hell do I recruit this huge squad if I'm only allowed to bring two people along? I mean hell, Dragon Age managed to up the limit a bit. Battles would be so much bigger and epic if I could bring everyone along. Or at the *very least* more than two.
Overall, I still loved the game, but changing the gameplay like they did really soured it for me.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
I hope you're right that it's challenging but not retarded hard (like DA:O). I'm playing thru on veteran and it's almost too easy. I had to actually check to make sure I didn't put it on normal by accident since I like never die
I'm glad that things are generally pretty challenging on Insanity, though I have had to cheese the game one or two times by cheating the AI. Whether that's because I suck or because the section was not balanced properly, I can't really say.
PSN: Threeve703
Yes, they have higher levels of health and armour and shields and barriers (oh my!)
In the meantime your shields and armour/health have been fucked.
And they use abilities a lot more (fecking Geth shield).
Other than those? Yeah no difference.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Chill dude, I'm only referring to the AI. Obviously they've done other things to make Insanity challenging.
PSN: Threeve703
I am chilled. I'm perfectly fine.
Okay yeah, I was pretty vague there.
I mean on Horizon. Apparently if you take long enough to complete the final fight, she says something amusing. I couldn't make it last long enough to hear it.
Then again...bestfiltrator. Uncloaked headshots even one-shot most of them. That would be much...different with a "caster".
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/128/index/1197476/2#1206354
someone needs to put this in the op so he can never live down his silly goosery
oh shit.
time for 4th run!
When I click on this I get a list of people posting their list of "best" squadmates.
I get nothing about delaying the IFF.
Edit: Alright it was there, just hidden among all the other posts.
That thread's a bit harsh on Jacob. He's not that bad at stripping away armour and regenerative abilities with his ammo type, it's just that he has to get close to do it.
For the most part, yeah. It's absolutely nothing like ME1 though, where you basically had to fire non stop on 1 enemy for 25 seconds before he would even get to half life. Stuff here is mostly killable, provided you play smart with ammo and abilities to strip away protections.
Still though, there's still some bullshit here and there. Stuff like:
-Krogan. If you don't have some way of killing their regen, they're retarded. It takes far more than a clip to take them out, and they regen nearly all that health back by the time you're finished reloading. Not that bad, and they're rare enough to be a fun fight, unless they do what they do best, which leads to...
-Charging enemies. Related to the krogan above, but also any enemy that ends up getting close enough to shoot you through cover. You're basically fucked over. If you do ANYTHING, you will get torn to shreds and die, because you simply will not live for more than 5 seconds out of cover. If you do NOTHING, then you'll obviously, because you can't fight back or run.
-Respawning enemies. This mechanic has no business in Insanity. By Insanity's own rules, you stay in cover or you die. That means clearing out the path as best you can before moving up. But enemies take quite a bit longer to kill. I ran into a situation on one level, where I was a few feet from a corner, with 3 mechs up ahead. Even with focus fire and the proper ammo, by the time I killed one and moved on to the second, another one popped out the corner. I can't move up, because moving up into 3 armored mechs is an instant game over, and I can't clear a path to move up, because they won't stop coming. I burned through 75% of my ammo trying to get through before I got fed up and pulled the rocket launcher out. And even THEN it took close to 10 shots to clear those 3 perpetual mechs enough to move.
-Squad AI. Yup, they're still idiots. You still have to babysit them a lot, but even then there are problem spots. Like when I order someone to cover but they ignore it. Or I put them in cover, but then they just sit there and never attack. When they work, they do their job well enough. But when they don't, you just want to rip your hair out.
Still though, it's not really THAT bad. I'm already on the second set of recruitments, and other than some bits here and there where I wish I could slap a BioWare developer, it's fun, for the most part.
However at the same time this is also retarded, because there are too many abilities that can't be used on enemies with protection, and on Insanity, all enemies have protection. Once that protection is gone, they're weak as hell anyway. So it's almost like you just simply don't have half your powers.
Because on the 360 it's a pain in the ass to micromanage your squad's abilities and you rather have them fire all their abilities at will than going into the wheel menu every 5 seconds.
Agreed, I did the same thing after I realized squadmates were using totally rediculous abilities on the wrong enemies. Makes the game a lot more fun to really get in there and control the fights. Plus it gave me a better grasp of the different powers each person has. Curious to see how well I'll do on an insanity run...
also curious about something: how do you get the incinerate enemies achievement? I use that power a LOT but it seems to give me credit arbitrarily