there aren't that many of them in the context of the entire galaxy. They rely on being able to isolate systems via relay control and on turning existing races into puppet armies. There are some lore notes in ME3 about how some of the (presumably indoctrinated) governments/leaders on earth want to capitulate/negotiate/whatever with them.
I do agree it's a little bit silly that the hyper advanced super-race of sentient starships only have relatively short range, direct fire beam weapons to rely on though
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Several planets had orbital bombardments on them, including dropping asteroids if the population was too small to be worth harvesting by the Reapers. So it's not like they don't have the capability to quickly wipe out Earth, they just don't want to.
Think of it like removing cancerous flesh. If you wanted to kill the whole person, just smash them with a hammer, but that's not the Reaper goal. They want as many bodies as possible to make a new Reaper, so that means carefully cutting away the resistance while saving the majority of the population to juicify.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
there aren't that many of them in the context of the entire galaxy. They rely on being able to isolate systems via relay control and on turning existing races into puppet armies. There are some lore notes in ME3 about how some of the (presumably indoctrinated) governments/leaders on earth want to capitulate/negotiate/whatever with them.
I do agree it's a little bit silly that the hyper advanced super-race of sentient starships only have relatively short range, direct fire beam weapons to rely on though
aye but its the same in anything vaguely space operatic. obviously since space combat hasnae happened its a bit daft to talk about 'realistic' space combat but it would probably just be a case of whoever sees the other guys first kills them without being detected because space is staggeringly gigantic and empty and ships are really really small. so from the point of view of the attackers it would just be 'the computer says there is something naughty out there, press the kill button, hooray good job' and from the point of view of the attackees they would just be cheerfully doing their space jobs but are then suddenly dead with no warning
not the kind of stuff of grand stirring cinematic battles. so aye reapers walking around a couple hundred yards away and zapping people with overpowered laser pointers is pretty silly but i guess silliness comes with the territory
Not...really. In ME2 there's a vehicle thing, but it's all in DLC and therefore optional. It's "better" than ME1, so, it's merely bad instead of terrible.
Biggest gripe about ME2 is mineral scanning. I didn't think it was as bad as the driving in ME1, but it's still a shitty game mechanic.
Mineral scanning was interesting for me because I enjoyed reading all of the flavor text for each planet, even if I recognized a few from the first game. It gave the game a nice break from the action. There were even a few you could tell were going to be rich in specific minerals because there had been a space war in some age past and all of the drive wells had been left behind, or miners had come for a certain reason and then had to abandon the planet. It was a nice little touch, and did a lot more for me than ME1's equivalent of flavor text and resource gathering, which usually went as follows for me:
1. going down to a planet
2. finding out the crewmembers I brought didn't have the skill I needed to open something
3. going back to the normandy to recrew
4. coming back down with the crewmember and skill needed
5. finding out that skill wasn't high enough
6. remembering which planet had that specific chest and which crewmember I needed to come back to later after leveling more
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Mineral Scanning just wasn't that much of a problem for me, I was going to see what planet that was anyway, which means I was going to fly to it, scan it two or three times and get the biggest spikes, and move on. You do that and you easily have enough for ship and personnel upgrades.
I liked the exploration aspect of ME1... but that's something I like in most RPGs and sandbox games, and exploration is a mechanic that's not for everybody... so, yeah. I thought ME2's mineral scanning was interesting too. A full on exploration or scanning thing just wouldn't have fit into ME3, given the state of things.
Can't say I ever ran into that problem with skills, but I always had someone that had a high level of Decryption and Electronics after I hit that wall once early on in the normal bit of game.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
So no balance changes today. Apparently the Hazard maps are going to stick around permanently though.
What other hazard maps have they included? I only remember the four or so that have been around for a while now. The push-button in the Reactor, the sandstorm in Giant, the acid rain in Ghost, the snow in White, the lightning and dark clouds in Dagger.
Upgrades are important, yeah. At least get three upgrades for your SMGs and your sniper rifles. Couldn't hurt to get three for your pistol, too. They start getting huge damage bonuses against some defenses. S'why I keep as many upgrades going as I can as early as possible, you get a lot more powerful and can defeat boss units much more easily.
i found both mako driving and mineral scanning pretty tedious. i mean mako driving wisnae all bad but every planet had the same hideous tiled textures in different colours and most had the same ridiculous terrain, and your reward for driving around was a ctrl-c+ctrl-v sidemission in a ctrl-c+ctrl-v bunker or mine or something which gave you some useless shite to clog up your useless inventory
mineral scanning was dull but its main crime was that it meant you had to have that whole-planet view instead of the gorgeous low-orbit views you got in me1. i could watch those clouds drift past for hours
given that in the fictional setting you can EFFECTively change the MASS of objects ive got no idea why they build these slow hulking things like the mako or mjolnirs or atlases. you can use your space magic to make these things light enough to literally fly through the air, why have you instead elected to make them slow as hell? just to give people who are shooting at them a sporting chance or something?
If the Atlas were light enough to be carried away by the wind, it would suck in combat. Shepherd would heavy melee it into space.
I always gathered that the way a lot of ME engines worked was to lower the mass enough to make the energy expenditure to overcome/offset gravity a lot less, but not to rule it out entirely. Thus, the Mako can climb a 60 degree slope, but not a 70 degree slope (or whatever it is.)
Still. ME1 should've had shuttles. I very hated the Mako, even though it made sense. In its way.
Yeah, another dislike I have of the Mako is that no place on earth looks like these planets they've generated - and by that I don't mean they are alien, I mean that they seem to disobey all the laws we know about erosion and plate tectonics and what not. It very much looked like a random collection of pointy rocks that they then expect you to drive instead of fly over.
Aside from that I like the game I've got all the members of my party and am off to Vimire to find out more about Saren. The universe seems interesting, with lots of wars going on in the past - the Krogan saved everyone from the rachni, then the salarians made the virus to save everyone from the krogan. I do seem to spend a LOT of time selling Polonium Rounds XXIII to escape the dreaded 150 item limit.
I pretty much always travel around with Liara and Tali on away missions because man, those tech/biotic powers are amazing.
So no balance changes today. Apparently the Hazard maps are going to stick around permanently though.
Now that these don't come with new character releases, I'm back to dreading them. Especially after the reverted the acolyte back to a charge weapon. Who know what crazy things they'll do next!
Like nerf the geth shotgun. Its days are numbered I tell ya.
Yeah, another dislike I have of the Mako is that no place on earth looks like these planets they've generated - and by that I don't mean they are alien, I mean that they seem to disobey all the laws we know about erosion and plate tectonics and what not. It very much looked like a random collection of pointy rocks that they then expect you to drive instead of fly over.
Aside from that I like the game I've got all the members of my party and am off to Vimire to find out more about Saren. The universe seems interesting, with lots of wars going on in the past - the Krogan saved everyone from the rachni, then the salarians made the virus to save everyone from the krogan. I do seem to spend a LOT of time selling Polonium Rounds XXIII to escape the dreaded 150 item limit.
I pretty much always travel around with Liara and Tali on away missions because man, those tech/biotic powers are amazing.
Good luck on Virmire.
Protip: Keep a spare save just before you land on the planet, in case you haven't been reading any guides.
Yeah, another dislike I have of the Mako is that no place on earth looks like these planets they've generated - and by that I don't mean they are alien, I mean that they seem to disobey all the laws we know about erosion and plate tectonics and what not. It very much looked like a random collection of pointy rocks that they then expect you to drive instead of fly over.
Aside from that I like the game I've got all the members of my party and am off to Vimire to find out more about Saren. The universe seems interesting, with lots of wars going on in the past - the Krogan saved everyone from the rachni, then the salarians made the virus to save everyone from the krogan. I do seem to spend a LOT of time selling Polonium Rounds XXIII to escape the dreaded 150 item limit.
I pretty much always travel around with Liara and Tali on away missions because man, those tech/biotic powers are amazing.
I did my first (and only complete at this point) ME1 play-through with Liara and Tali, great combo if you're one of the soldier or soldier hybrid classes. I avoided guides, but ran across discussions in a much older incarnation of this thread about how good pistols were, so I did start investing in pistols and bought the specter weapons I wanted. Marksman (pistol tree) and the Commando specialization (infiltrators and soldiers) can make pistols extremely powerful.
I like to say that my Shepard as of the end of ME2 has killed two reapers with just a pistol.
i wish there was a device or pill that would erase memories of playing mass effect, just so i could load it up again and do it all over fresh as a daisy.
i just want to experience landing on a uncharted world again, the fucking galaxy map music while exploring, the me1 end run, the goddamn me2 suicide mission and even the weird cant sleep thinking about it too feeling i had when i tried to sleep after finishing the original ending of me3.
me3 ending spoilers
i went to sleep thinking about all those people in the citidel, and woke up wondering why god, whhhhhhhhhy did they dieeeee! andersooooooooooooooon
Deaderinred on
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BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
i wish there was a device or pill that would erase memories of playing mass effect, just so i could load it up again and do it all over fresh as a daisy.
i just want to experience landing on a uncharted world again, the fucking galaxy map music while exploring, the me1 end run, the goddamn me2 suicide mission and even the weird cant sleep thinking about it too feeling i had when i tried to sleep after finishing the original ending of me3.
me3 ending spoilers
i went to sleep thinking about all those people in the citidel, and woke up wondering why god, whhhhhhhhhy did they dieeeee! andersooooooooooooooon
I would also want that pill. Let me know if they invent it.
I had an acquaintance who had never played the series before, and I was so jealous as they fired up the first game. I guided them to the Citadel without interference, optimistic that they were starting an amazing journey.
A couple weeks afterwards, I notice they are no longer playing Mass Effect. I check their Achievements to compare what they had accomplished. I noticed they had completed both ME1 and ME2 (this was before ME3 came out).
I was unhappily surprised by what I found in their Achievements. They had selected Soldier as their class. They didn't customize their Shepard at all. They made mostly middle of the road choices (they had gotten neither the Paragon or Renegade achievements). They didn't pass any high persuasion checks. They did the bare minimum of side content. They romanced nobody.
Essentially, they had played through the game like a linear third person shooter, hastily avoiding anything off of the critical path, and investing little to no time in the conversations with their crew.
The wasted opportunity was heartbreaking.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I had an acquaintance who had never played the series before, and I was so jealous as they fired up the first game. I guided them to the Citadel without interference, optimistic that they were starting an amazing journey.
A couple weeks afterwards, I notice they are no longer playing Mass Effect. I check their Achievements to compare what they had accomplished. I noticed they had completed both ME1 and ME2 (this was before ME3 came out).
I was unhappily surprised by what I found in their Achievements. They had selected Soldier as their class. They didn't customize their Shepard at all. They made mostly middle of the road choices (they had gotten neither the Paragon or Renegade achievements). They didn't pass any high persuasion checks. They did the bare minimum of side content. They romanced nobody.
Essentially, they had played through the game like a linear third person shooter, hastily avoiding anything off of the critical path, and investing little to no time in the conversations with their crew.
The wasted opportunity was heartbreaking.
This is why I tend to not watch people play video games.
It is so hard for me not to tell them the "right" way to play and just let them have their own fun.
You can take your space magic of various forms and stick it in uncomfortable places.
I am going to hold off these threats to the universe with nothing more than my massive (courage) and an automatic rifle.
that and my ability to somehow manipulate the fabric of time
That's just computers nerds trying to simulate an athletes amazing reflexes, man. Michael Jordan experienced entire basketball games in Adrenaline Rush mode.
PSN: Valiant_heartPC: Valiantheart99
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Hey now, let's not put down soldier standard Shepards here.
I love it when awkward pub asari vanguards biotic charge the geth pyro you were about to krogan melee.. but she doesn't kill it, and just stands blocking in front of you as the pyro burns her to death. Also: on objective waves, when you are holding a team barely together and you're deactiving a trigger... and another pub runs up to deactivate the trigger you're already working on. Also, the rest of the team dies in random corners of the map.
I wish we got achievements or something for this kind of stuff.
solid 20 seconds of brute stunlocking as i tried desperately to avoid a banshee
get stuck on cover 2 feet from extraction
SORRY BRO, YOU'RE NOT ACROSS THE LINE
GOTTA LEAVE YOU BEHIND
this is because i'm a batarian isn't it
you humans are all racist
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I had a Paladin on one match actually be a tribute to the human race and use his shield to protect people as they did the activate 4 objective. Ravagers were put in their place, and it was just so.....thoughtful.
I guess that's the Alliance equivalent of holding the door open for someone.
Posts
I do agree it's a little bit silly that the hyper advanced super-race of sentient starships only have relatively short range, direct fire beam weapons to rely on though
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
OOOOH LAAAAAAH
Think of it like removing cancerous flesh. If you wanted to kill the whole person, just smash them with a hammer, but that's not the Reaper goal. They want as many bodies as possible to make a new Reaper, so that means carefully cutting away the resistance while saving the majority of the population to juicify.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
aye but its the same in anything vaguely space operatic. obviously since space combat hasnae happened its a bit daft to talk about 'realistic' space combat but it would probably just be a case of whoever sees the other guys first kills them without being detected because space is staggeringly gigantic and empty and ships are really really small. so from the point of view of the attackers it would just be 'the computer says there is something naughty out there, press the kill button, hooray good job' and from the point of view of the attackees they would just be cheerfully doing their space jobs but are then suddenly dead with no warning
not the kind of stuff of grand stirring cinematic battles. so aye reapers walking around a couple hundred yards away and zapping people with overpowered laser pointers is pretty silly but i guess silliness comes with the territory
Mineral scanning was interesting for me because I enjoyed reading all of the flavor text for each planet, even if I recognized a few from the first game. It gave the game a nice break from the action. There were even a few you could tell were going to be rich in specific minerals because there had been a space war in some age past and all of the drive wells had been left behind, or miners had come for a certain reason and then had to abandon the planet. It was a nice little touch, and did a lot more for me than ME1's equivalent of flavor text and resource gathering, which usually went as follows for me:
1. going down to a planet
2. finding out the crewmembers I brought didn't have the skill I needed to open something
3. going back to the normandy to recrew
4. coming back down with the crewmember and skill needed
5. finding out that skill wasn't high enough
6. remembering which planet had that specific chest and which crewmember I needed to come back to later after leveling more
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
Can't say I ever ran into that problem with skills, but I always had someone that had a high level of Decryption and Electronics after I hit that wall once early on in the normal bit of game.
What other hazard maps have they included? I only remember the four or so that have been around for a while now. The push-button in the Reactor, the sandstorm in Giant, the acid rain in Ghost, the snow in White, the lightning and dark clouds in Dagger.
Are there more than those?
This is my opinion.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Probably after some cider while watching a tv show, like Afk mining in rune scape.
hazard maps are my favorite maps
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Btw if any of you guys haven't seen it I'd check out the warframe thread. It's like ME3 minus cover plus space ninjas.
mineral scanning was dull but its main crime was that it meant you had to have that whole-planet view instead of the gorgeous low-orbit views you got in me1. i could watch those clouds drift past for hours
If the Atlas were light enough to be carried away by the wind, it would suck in combat. Shepherd would heavy melee it into space.
I always gathered that the way a lot of ME engines worked was to lower the mass enough to make the energy expenditure to overcome/offset gravity a lot less, but not to rule it out entirely. Thus, the Mako can climb a 60 degree slope, but not a 70 degree slope (or whatever it is.)
Still. ME1 should've had shuttles. I very hated the Mako, even though it made sense. In its way.
Aside from that I like the game I've got all the members of my party and am off to Vimire to find out more about Saren. The universe seems interesting, with lots of wars going on in the past - the Krogan saved everyone from the rachni, then the salarians made the virus to save everyone from the krogan. I do seem to spend a LOT of time selling Polonium Rounds XXIII to escape the dreaded 150 item limit.
I pretty much always travel around with Liara and Tali on away missions because man, those tech/biotic powers are amazing.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
it looked like a generic assault rifle and a sword to me, no actual interesting guns and no powers at all, plus it's all dark and shit
Now that these don't come with new character releases, I'm back to dreading them. Especially after the reverted the acolyte back to a charge weapon. Who know what crazy things they'll do next!
Good luck on Virmire.
Protip: Keep a spare save just before you land on the planet, in case you haven't been reading any guides.
thanks for the tip on the saves.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
Hazard White is kind of cool, as is Giant. Really atmospheric.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I did my first (and only complete at this point) ME1 play-through with Liara and Tali, great combo if you're one of the soldier or soldier hybrid classes. I avoided guides, but ran across discussions in a much older incarnation of this thread about how good pistols were, so I did start investing in pistols and bought the specter weapons I wanted. Marksman (pistol tree) and the Commando specialization (infiltrators and soldiers) can make pistols extremely powerful.
I like to say that my Shepard as of the end of ME2 has killed two reapers with just a pistol.
Origin: Viycktor
i just want to experience landing on a uncharted world again, the fucking galaxy map music while exploring, the me1 end run, the goddamn me2 suicide mission and even the weird cant sleep thinking about it too feeling i had when i tried to sleep after finishing the original ending of me3.
me3 ending spoilers
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
I would also want that pill. Let me know if they invent it.
A couple weeks afterwards, I notice they are no longer playing Mass Effect. I check their Achievements to compare what they had accomplished. I noticed they had completed both ME1 and ME2 (this was before ME3 came out).
I was unhappily surprised by what I found in their Achievements. They had selected Soldier as their class. They didn't customize their Shepard at all. They made mostly middle of the road choices (they had gotten neither the Paragon or Renegade achievements). They didn't pass any high persuasion checks. They did the bare minimum of side content. They romanced nobody.
Essentially, they had played through the game like a linear third person shooter, hastily avoiding anything off of the critical path, and investing little to no time in the conversations with their crew.
The wasted opportunity was heartbreaking.
This is why I tend to not watch people play video games.
It is so hard for me not to tell them the "right" way to play and just let them have their own fun.
I am going to hold off these threats to the universe with nothing more than my massive (courage) and an automatic rifle.
DS Friend code: 3840-6605-3406
that and my ability to somehow manipulate the fabric of time
That's just computers nerds trying to simulate an athletes amazing reflexes, man. Michael Jordan experienced entire basketball games in Adrenaline Rush mode.
I wish we got achievements or something for this kind of stuff.
solid 20 seconds of brute stunlocking as i tried desperately to avoid a banshee
get stuck on cover 2 feet from extraction
SORRY BRO, YOU'RE NOT ACROSS THE LINE
GOTTA LEAVE YOU BEHIND
this is because i'm a batarian isn't it
you humans are all racist
I guess that's the Alliance equivalent of holding the door open for someone.