Mass Effect 2

[Reverend]

Just in case some haven't heard already, the hammerhead DLC is due out towards the end of the month. I'm assuming it's just going to be a bunch of linear shooting gallery maps like the old feros & noveria driving sections, but it'll still be nice having something to ride around in again.

While we're on the subject, I've been wondering about the non-combat gameplay elements; I'm sure we all agree that neither the ME2 scanning nor the ME1 bouncy-flippy mako gameplay were quite right, I wonder if the solution would be a combination of the two. You'd still scan planets, but only for landing sights like with the N7 missions and once down you get your little patch of alien dirt to drive around on, but instead of relying on a limited range radar (and assuming the hover tank handles better than the mako) you have a directional scanner that'll let you home in on anomalies without having to tredge over every inch of dirt to make sure you don't miss anything. Perhaps add in some random encounters to keep things interesting?

Anyone else have an idea as to how to improve the non-shooter/non-talky-fetchy elements, aside from ditching them altogether?

 

[John Clark]

On my second play-through. I was amused by a Babylon 5 reference. There's a planet called Vir, which "is ignored by most of the galaxy."

I wonder if it might turn out to be a little more important in ME3? It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for

 

[Mr Light]

How bout you fly to the planet and do a scanning like in ME2, only you just shoot a single probe into the entire planet and that's it. And the probes just cost a lot of money.

 

[Angel4576]

Scanning planets was a bit tedious, but still an improvement on the Mako sections of the original game, which were fcuking irritating beyond belief.

Still, Bioware listened the first time around when people wanted rid of the Mako. Hopefully they'll be equally receptive this time around.

Started my final playthrough on insanity.

 

[Arrqh]

Hammerhead trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-hammerhead-mass-effect/62772

 

[The Master of Tarquin Hill]

While we're on the subject, I've been wondering about the non-combat gameplay elements; I'm sure we all agree that neither the ME2 scanning nor the ME1 bouncy-flippy mako gameplay were quite right, I wonder if the solution would be a combination of the two. You'd still scan planets, but only for landing sights like with the N7 missions and once down you get your little patch of alien dirt to drive around on, but instead of relying on a limited range radar (and assuming the hover tank handles better than the mako) you have a directional scanner that'll let you home in on anomalies without having to tredge over every inch of dirt to make sure you don't miss anything.

Ya know, in ME1 you could go to your map on the pause screen and plant a flag on your destination, this gives you a directional arrow to follow.

Anyways, I'm surprised there isn't more discussion in this thread about the Insanity difficulty. I'm on my second play-through and doing Insanity this time, the first was on casual.

I'm wondering how other people might have dealt with the fan room in the Mordin mission. I've done some googling and haven't found much to help me.

I'm playing a 30th level Vanguard(special ability: Reave) with Miranda and Zaeed. I don't know why people think she is such a must on insanity, she's constantly dying whether I micromanage her or not.

The last Krogan on the second fan always kills me because I'm so low on ammo and one or both of my squad mates are already dead, and I'm out of medi-gel, thanks to Miranda.

Any thoughts?

 

[bullethead]

While we're on the subject, I've been wondering about the non-combat gameplay elements; I'm sure we all agree that neither the ME2 scanning nor the ME1 bouncy-flippy mako gameplay were quite right, I wonder if the solution would be a combination of the two. You'd still scan planets, but only for landing sights like with the N7 missions and once down you get your little patch of alien dirt to drive around on, but instead of relying on a limited range radar (and assuming the hover tank handles better than the mako) you have a directional scanner that'll let you home in on anomalies without having to tredge over every inch of dirt to make sure you don't miss anything.

Ya know, in ME1 you could go to your map on the pause screen and plant a flag on your destination, this gives you a directional arrow to follow.

Anyways, I'm surprised there isn't more discussion in this thread about the Insanity difficulty. I'm on my second play-through and doing Insanity this time, the first was on casual.

I'm wondering how other people might have dealt with the fan room in the Mordin mission. I've done some googling and haven't found much to help me.

I'm playing a 30th level Vanguard(special ability: Reave) with Miranda and Zaeed. I don't know why people think she is such a must on insanity, she's constantly dying whether I micromanage her or not.

The last Krogan on the second fan always kills me because I'm so low on ammo and one or both of my squad mates are already dead, and I'm out of medi-gel, thanks to Miranda.

Any thoughts?

Do you have any squad ammo enabled? Squad Incendiary Ammo should help Miranda and Zaeed take out the vorcha quicker. Also, don't waste medigel reviving squadmates unless you're on the Collector Ship. Squad AI sucks and they'll die anyway.

BTW, what did you pick from the weapon specialization/training thing on the Collector Ship?

 

[The Master of Tarquin Hill]

Do you have any squad ammo enabled? Squad Incendiary Ammo should help Miranda and Zaeed take out the vorcha quicker. Also, don't waste medigel reviving squadmates unless you're on the Collector Ship. Squad AI sucks and they'll die anyway.

BTW, what did you pick from the weapon specialization/training thing on the Collector Ship?

No squad ammo and I picked the dumbass shotgun upgrade instead of learning the AR. The Vorcha's don't really matter much since I have reave and incendiary ammo. The real problem is that my HW was emptied on the 3 krogans before this room.

 

[Reverend]

While we're on the subject, I've been wondering about the non-combat gameplay elements; I'm sure we all agree that neither the ME2 scanning nor the ME1 bouncy-flippy mako gameplay were quite right, I wonder if the solution would be a combination of the two. You'd still scan planets, but only for landing sights like with the N7 missions and once down you get your little patch of alien dirt to drive around on, but instead of relying on a limited range radar (and assuming the hover tank handles better than the mako) you have a directional scanner that'll let you home in on anomalies without having to tredge over every inch of dirt to make sure you don't miss anything.

Ya know, in ME1 you could go to your map on the pause screen and plant a flag on your destination, this gives you a directional arrow to follow.

Yes I do know and it's irrelevant. The flag only serves as a guide to a point on the map that you select. It doesn't help you find minerals or anomalies that aren't already pre-marked. To find them you have to drive up to or past them and spot them on the short range radar. Without using walkthroughs or guides, the only way to make sure you don't miss anything on the one mile square of dirt you're allowed to joyride in, you have to systematically "sweep" back and forth until you've covered the entire map. Combined with the drunken Dalek on a bouncy castle handling, it makes for a deathly boring and frustrating gaming experiance. By contrast, the scanning in ME2 is only boring.

 

[clint g]

Yes I do know and it's irrelevant. The flag only serves as a guide to a point on the map that you select. It doesn't help you find minerals or anomalies that aren't already pre-marked. To find them you have to drive up to or past them and spot them on the short range radar. Without using walkthroughs or guides, the only way to make sure you don't miss anything on the one mile square of dirt you're allowed to joyride in, you have to systematically "sweep" back and forth until you've covered the entire map. Combined with the drunken Dalek on a bouncy castle handling, it makes for a deathly boring and frustrating gaming experiance. By contrast, the scanning in ME2 is only boring.

I for one am inclined to agree. Personally, I hope they totally ditch the resource aspect of the game and instead focus on making a couple of side quest planets or something.

 

[LeadHead]

Agreed, maybe lots of missions to protect mining ships or colonies, either from raiders or rachni, things like that. You clear them out, you get a huge load of resources.

 

[Jax]

You would think Mass Effect 3 being the last game so the war will come to some sort of conclusion that you won't need to gather resources and will be given them and its up to you what to do with them.

You would figure

 

[Reverend]

Yes I do know and it's irrelevant. The flag only serves as a guide to a point on the map that you select. It doesn't help you find minerals or anomalies that aren't already pre-marked. To find them you have to drive up to or past them and spot them on the short range radar. Without using walkthroughs or guides, the only way to make sure you don't miss anything on the one mile square of dirt you're allowed to joyride in, you have to systematically "sweep" back and forth until you've covered the entire map. Combined with the drunken Dalek on a bouncy castle handling, it makes for a deathly boring and frustrating gaming experiance. By contrast, the scanning in ME2 is only boring.

I for one am inclined to agree. Personally, I hope they totally ditch the resource aspect of the game and instead focus on making a couple of side quest planets or something.

I wouldn't go so far as to ditch it altogether because then it'd just be a 3rd person shooter with a conversation tree...which I suppose it's pretty close to being as it is.

Part of what makes the "scanning" mechanic so tedious is that you can quite easily stock up on common minerals while you can spend ages getting the scarcer ones together for a specific upgrade, which unfortunately reduces the mechanic to pure grind. Perhaps the addition of a system whereby you can sell and/or trade surplus minerals on some kind of resource exchange or market that will allow you to make a choice to sacrifice a whole bunch of "Resource A" to get a little of the more precious "Resource D" or sell a bit of "Resource C" for pure credits that you can use to buy some extra equipment. Of course it would need to be balanced properly so getting loaded with credits and minerals isn't too easy and perhaps only have the trading/exchange stations at hub worlds like the Citadel, Omega, Illium etc, which each market having it's own set of local exchange rates.

So it'd be more or less profitable to trade certain minerals depending on where you are.

 

[firehawk12]

Well, they're not going to turn the game into Freelancer (unfortunately).

That said, in terms of the story, it's fairly idiotic that they'd spend billions to both rebuild Shepard AND rebuild the Normandy but then cheap out on any of the upgrades.

I just imagine that it was a more substantial gameplay mechanic that they just forgot to improve upon... and they were so enamored with the "ship upgrades = save your crew" gimmick that they decided to keep it in rather than find some other way to have your crew potentially die.

 

[STR]

Well, they're not going to turn the game into Freelancer (unfortunately).

That said, in terms of the story, it's fairly idiotic that they'd spend billions to both rebuild Shepard AND rebuild the Normandy but then cheap out on any of the upgrades.

Given that the SR-1 was less than a year-old (at least it seems to be, since it was blown up 3 months after the Citadel battle, and the thing was on its initial operational cruise at the beginning of ME1), and the state of the art when the SR-2 was being drawn up, it isn't unreasonable that certain technologies didn't make it into the final blueprint drafts.

Besides, some upgrades were made. They said the SR2 had more power. And somethings might be more easily acquired by Shepard than Cerberus alone. Friends in high places and all...

 

[Reverend]

Well, they're not going to turn the game into Freelancer (unfortunately).

That said, in terms of the story, it's fairly idiotic that they'd spend billions to both rebuild Shepard AND rebuild the Normandy but then cheap out on any of the upgrades.

I just imagine that it was a more substantial gameplay mechanic that they just forgot to improve upon... and they were so enamored with the "ship upgrades = save your crew" gimmick that they decided to keep it in rather than find some other way to have your crew potentially die.

Indeed, they even acknowledged it in ME2 where Mordin made fun of Spectres having to buy their own gear. Like the klepto impulse to buy, steal and horde gear, resource managment is one of those RPG tropes that many developers seam unwilling to loose no matter how illogical it might be. At least with ME2 they dumped that ludicrous inventory.

 

[firehawk12]

Well, I might accept that Cerberus just didn't have the technical know-how to build the upgrades... but that doesn't explain why they don't have people mining Palladium somewhere so that they can ship it to you if you need it.

Kirk had some banal missions, I'm sure... but I don't think he had to mine some ore before heading to the Khitomer conference or whatever.

It's funny though, because Norman admitted at GDC that the mining was bad. I just wonder what they'll do next... I mean, at this point they might as well get rid of all resource management all together. Or they could just admit that they want to rip off Star Control 2 and have a 2d Mako driving mini-game.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Actually, I enjoyed the mining in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I thought it somehow gave the feeling that the universe was bigger.

 

[firehawk12]

I don't consider the missions in ME1 to be mining missions... and really, I didn't mind the driving that much - it was just that the mountains were designed to force you to take least optimal paths... and really, it was just annoying how every time you landed on a planet, you chose to drop in a place with a giant canyon or a giant mountain.

 

[clint g]

I don't consider the missions in ME1 to be mining missions... and really, I didn't mind the driving that much - it was just that the mountains were designed to force you to take least optimal paths... and really, it was just annoying how every time you landed on a planet, you chose to drop in a place with a giant canyon or a giant mountain.

That was definitely a big part of the problem. I didn't have much of an issue with how resource hunting went down int he first game. The only real problem is that the mountains made it a bitch and the sidequests all took place in the same freaking warehouse. If they fixed those too problems then perhaps they can salvage the resource missions.