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The Mass Effect Community Thread |OT2|

Luxorek

Member
Just moments ago they got permission to do 100% run starting NOW.

Makes sense, but damn... it pretty much means in a day or two I'm gonna wake up to full romance videos, game ending, secret companions and who knows what else. Such temptation.
 

Nucks

Neo Member
Continuing from the other thread, I also had the sound issue in multiplayer. There was no direction for the sound, it was super confusing. I would hear the fighting in all directions, leaving me often looking for the enemy in the wrong direction because I had no one in line of sight. Coupled with the maps being new it made for a very frustrating experience.

It's obviously a bug, I hope the quash it soon.

Yeah, I've had the same issues in about half of my MP matches. It can be incredibly disorienting, especially if wearing headphones. I haven't found it too hard to deal with once I realize it's bugged, but I'd imagine on the higher difficulties it'd lead to some BS deaths if you're not constantly spinning around checking your radar.

Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect the single player.

Edit: Just seen they're aware, hopefully the fix comes out asap.
 
I'm trying as best I can to pace myself this trial.

Played Scott and Sara two hours apiece, still not sure which I should go with. I think I liked Scott's VA better though. Planning on romancing
Vetra
, only to find out they are bi. I also really like the differing family dynamic between the siblings and their dad.
 

Xando

Member
I kinda wish
we see more of Alec (i know there are still the memories you can collect). He seemed like a really interesting character.
 
I'm trying as best I can to pace myself this trial.

Played Scott and Sara two hours apiece, still not sure which I should go with. I think I liked Scott's VA better though. Planning on romancing
Vetra
, only to find out they are bi. I also really like the differing family dynamic between the siblings and their dad.
How different are the family dynamics between the twins and Alec?
 

Tovarisc

Member
How different are the family dynamics between the twins and Alec?

Alec is kinda stereotypical military dad, never really there and distant from his kids. Early on you get impression that Sara and Scott looked after each other since they were little and are very close, while Alec is this distant authority figure.
 
Nice. I should say I went Vanguard (or Scrapper or whatever it's called now). I love charging in, but I keep getting killed after I do. May need to be a bit more careful with that.
Backlash works well with it, and at the start of the game you'll want to use only one weapon.
 

Sai

Member
Happy to know there's a fix for the sound. Hope they pump up the impact of those combo explosions along with it!

Is there going to be a dedicated multiplayer thread along with the OT? Need a list of Xbox folk to play with.
 
For trial players, what bonus class are you taking at first?

I'm went Infiltrator (put points into combat and tech), since I was going with a tech focus and always aim for weak points anyway. Bonus damage for tech powers and weak point shots is icing on the cake. Enemies seem more spongey in this title so tech combos and weak point attacks are very efficient. Planning to just level up Incinerate and Overload on the tech side and take all the weapon damage and health passives on the combat side.

Plus invisible dodges - OOoOoo spooky.
 
ctayTe6.gif

Greatest DLC ever
 

Bombless

Member
For those that went heavily into MP, what classes & weapons did you play/like?

The human engie felt solid, the turret was surprisingly beefy on Bronze (i hope its hp will scale in higher difficulties). The fact you can designate targets was much needed but at the same time I felt it lasted too long and often when you'd need it deployed elsewhere you'd be forced to self destruct it and eat the cooldown first. There was a synergy upgrade that healed the turret and buffed you while in turret proximity but I don't remember whether it was in the turret tree or the tech passive tree.

I unlocked the Turian Soldier with a 20k pack (don't do that btw, just chain 5k packs!) and decided to main him since it was a rarer class. Fortification is a no-brainer, looking up its upgrade tree I found out they put most of the Tech Armour stuff in there (increased damage/melee/explosion on trigger). The adrenaline/weapon overheat skill is nice, the problem is finding a weapon with a big enough magazine to maximise the damage over the (short) duration. I got the Cyclone AR and it instantly felt better but I couldn't level the skill high enough to see if it did do well (there's duration and magazine size buffs later in the tree). Frag grenade is a tried and true staple of the soldier and there's plenty of power cells to go around (more on that later). With a combination of 'nade upgrades and the Weapon Mastery passive I could see the power cells max hit 6 very quickly, making it a good boss killer (with the relevant damage specialisation). I could also have sworn that I was throwing more than one grenade after a few upgrades but I can't verify that since the trial is over (and i was so desperate to play more games that I didn't really take the time to study the power trees).

All in all the soldiers are dependant on their weapons to excel and since you have nothing but crap weapons to start with they have the toughest time among all the classes. Can't beat the badass turian armour and helmet though!

I also unlocked the Asari Huntress shortly before the end of the trial but I didn't play more than a game with her. Area Stealth seemed too short ranged to be effective and I didn't like having 2 biotic detonators. While throw was pretty useful on its own, Lance felt awkward to use since you have to aim it like a shot would be (it doesn't home in).

In terms of weapons, the Avenger is still the useless pos we all know and love, the Incisor was an alright weapon in the hands of the turian soldier, the base sniper rifle is surprisingly decent and shotgun spread felt weird on the Katana...but it was probably due to the lag. Oh, and krogan headbutting still being in is the best thing ever.

Edit : I forgot to talk about the elephant in the MP room : THE GODDAMN JETPACK.

My GOD how good it feels to be truly MOBILE. Now everyone can feel like the ME3 havocs. And you can still move while you hover. Also the turian has defence boosts while airborne haha!
 
I've been building into the sentinel profile, I'm sure I won't see the true benefits of the added defensive bonuses until later on because Insanity difficulty is still proving to be a struggle at the start.

I just wish the tech armour didn't disappear outside of combat.
 

deafmedal

Member
Fresh start, new thread smells as good as laundry fresh from the dryer :)
Here's to a great ME community going forth, may meGAF be as awesome as DGAF!
UNLIMITED HYPE!!
i can't finish horizon, I've been indoctrinated
 
Anyone playing this on PS4? I'm curious to know how often it drops under 30fps.

I always go Vanguard on my first ME character. Perfect balance for me. I can be aggressive but still be a mix of both biotic and shooter.
 

sdijoseph

Member
I asked this in the performance thread, but in case I don't get a response: Can anyone with a low power rig (like an i5 2500k + GTX 760) share what settings they used to get an acceptable image quality + 30 fps combo?

I keep fiddling with the settings and I almost have it down, but for some reason the cut-scenes can have drops to 20 fps sometimes (even with mesh quality at medium) and there is *a lot* of aliasing on the hair for some reason (even with FXAA).
 

Van Bur3n

Member
I was just shopping for weapon mods and then suddenly the trial ended. I didn't even get to Eos, I was too busy talking to everyone. Tis sad.

But I gotta say, I really enjoyed my experience with it. Went in skeptical and with a cynical attitude and I came out surprised and wanting more. Getting this game at release.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
what is this game what is this series
 

BizzyBum

Member
But I gotta say, I really enjoyed my experience with it. Went in skeptical and with a cynical attitude and I came out surprised and wanting more. Getting this game at release.

Yeah, I can't wait to play again on Tuesday.

Seems most people are just complaining about character creation and facial animations. I'm also not going to form any opinion on the story yet since it barely began in the trial. Of course no one really digs the new cast yet, we had a decade and 3 full games with Shepard and company, it's going to take some time for me to care about these people.
 

Patryn

Member
Anyone playing this on PS4? I'm curious to know how often it drops under 30fps.

I always go Vanguard on my first ME character. Perfect balance for me. I can be aggressive but still be a mix of both biotic and shooter.

PS4 is the only console that doesn't have an Access trial, so the only people who would know were people who found early copies, streamers, and reviewers.
 
For those that went heavily into MP, what classes & weapons did you play/like?

The human engie felt solid, the turret was surprisingly beefy on Bronze (i hope its hp will scale in higher difficulties). The fact you can designate targets was much needed but at the same time I felt it lasted too long and often when you'd need it deployed elsewhere you'd be forced to self destruct it and eat the cooldown first. There was a synergy upgrade that healed the turret and buffed you while in turret proximity but I don't remember whether it was in the turret tree or the tech passive tree.

I unlocked the Turian Soldier with a 20k pack (don't do that btw, just chain 5k packs!) and decided to main him since it was a rarer class. Fortification is a no-brainer, looking up its upgrade tree I found out they put most of the Tech Armour stuff in there (increased damage/melee/explosion on trigger). The adrenaline/weapon overheat skill is nice, the problem is finding a weapon with a big enough magazine to maximise the damage over the (short) duration. I got the Cyclone AR and it instantly felt better but I couldn't level the skill high enough to see if it did do well (there's duration and magazine size buffs later in the tree). Frag grenade is a tried and true staple of the soldier and there's plenty of power cells to go around (more on that later). With a combination of 'nade upgrades and the Weapon Mastery passive I could see the power cells max hit 6 very quickly, making it a good boss killer (with the relevant damage specialisation). I could also have sworn that I was throwing more than one grenade after a few upgrades but I can't verify that since the trial is over (and i was so desperate to play more games that I didn't really take the time to study the power trees).

All in all the soldiers are dependant on their weapons to excel and since you have nothing but crap weapons to start with they have the toughest time among all the classes. Can't beat the badass turian armour and helmet though!

I also unlocked the Asari Huntress shortly before the end of the trial but I didn't play more than a game with her. Area Stealth seemed too short ranged to be effective and I didn't like having 2 biotic detonators. While throw was pretty useful on its own, Lance felt awkward to use since you have to aim it like a shot would be (it doesn't home in).

In terms of weapons, the Avenger is still the useless pos we all know and love, the Incisor was an alright weapon in the hands of the turian soldier, the base sniper rifle is surprisingly decent and shotgun spread felt weird on the Katana...but it was probably due to the lag. Oh, and krogan headbutting still being in is the best thing ever.

Edit : I forgot to talk about the elephant in the MP room : THE GODDAMN JETPACK.

My GOD how good it feels to be truly MOBILE. Now everyone can feel like the ME3 havocs. And you can still move while you hover. Also the turian has defence boosts while airborne haha!
I havent tried it yet but I hope I find some new species to latch onto in mp. I miss my flaming vorcha, and Batarian slaver, and biotic god volus. I rarely played the human race unless they were the N7 variety.
 
Aw shit people, it's time! I don't usually pop into community side, but I think I'm gonna spend some time here in the future.

I've been out of town since the day after the trial went live, so when I get back I'll still have like seven hours to log. I think I'm gonna reroll as Sara and get through as much of the single player as I can until I hit the wall, then play some MP with whatever time is left.
 

witness

Member
Went ahead and preordered the deluxe on Amazon today, PS4. I'm weak and have to have all the dlc items, plus the Prime discount is pretty great. Excited to see the improvements this will have on Pro over the trial I'm playing on XB1.
 

Tovarisc

Member
Mining with Nomad could have been made so much better with few tweaks.
  • When entering part of planet with minerals have game faintly highlight borders of that area. Currently you have no idea about size or shape of area so it's pure guess work.
  • Have "warmer" system by e.g. having heatmap of grounds mineral density for X meters around Nomad and/or get audio tips when nearing mineral deposit and it's peak density like in ME2
Now it's just pure guess work where you blindly drive around hoping for some reaction from meters. I spent 10 minutes looking for last mineral deposit in one area and found it by pure accident as I had given up and went to explore hillside that required looong way around to get on. There it was, deposit of iron. On hillside that made no sense to be part mineral area.
 
For those that went heavily into MP, what classes & weapons did you play/like?

I dabbled a little in every class, and tried different weapons, and this is my general take on multiplayer in general right now:

  • To start, over the course of the 10 hour trial, I opened 11 of the "Super Premium" or whatnot packs in the multiplayer store. The ones that cost 100k credits or 300 Biodollars
    I received:
    1 Ultra Rare Weapon
    1 Ultra Rare Character - The Asari Duelist
    Not great odds in the gamble boxes, and it seems the consumables and boosters are used to take up space. As for the Asari Duelist, the cool-sounding Vanguard with the sword, shes not that great. Her melee attack with the sword forces you to do a teleport animation which takes about 2.5 seconds, and moves you a good bit forward at the same time whether you like it or not. I couldn't find use for the frontal shield ability since dodging and cover was always the better option if you don't want to take damage. Only upside seemed to be that your dodge is replaced with a cosmetic teleport. Don't be fooled by this character just because she has a cool sword.

  • Compare this to the Human Kineticist - who is ridiculous. This character has the best Bionic abilities outside Charge, a great look and flavor lines, and of course...the ability to spam biotic powers with no cooldown. When the ability ends, you lose your shields, but its not hard to hide behind a rock for 3 seconds. You can watch someone stream using it here if you like: https://www.twitch.tv/strippin

  • I feel that while its nice to have different flavors of the same sort of class, in that you can have 3 different Engineers with different abilities for example, some abilities are clearly better than others. Flamethrower is rather silly compared to Incinerate for example, just like the Biotic frontal shield has little use. So you hope you can get the character that doesn't have a bum skill, and rather characters that can prime and detonate abilties and be useful all on their own. The "power cell" abilities like Sticky Grenade are incredibly powerful and are supposed to be balanced by their limited use. Only thing is - all you have to do is walk near an ammo pack to refill them. Spam 3 grenades on a boss enemy or group then just run to a pack - rinse and repeat.

  • The inbalance between characters is mirrored in the inbalance between weapons. You do not need an assault rifle if you have a Raptor sniper rifle - it has a 15 clip baseline, fires as fast as you click the trigger, and with a mod has no spread (it already has no kick). Once you have a Black Widow you're set for heavy damage sniping. The N7 Hurricane SMG is the same way - assault rifle accuracy with a bigger clip and rate of fire. My experience with shotguns has been rather disappointing - their slow fire rate is often not offset by a big damage boost, since they are incredibly inaccurate and very susceptible to latency.

  • Latency and bugs. P2P is terrible but here to stay. You cross your fingers every match and hope for the best. There is no ping meter or anything so you will not know until you get in a match if its worth sticking around or not, and you have to equip boosters before entering. Its always better to host, but if everyone hosts - who joins? I had one instance where my audio completely cut out and the game had to be reset, and a few streamers I watched have had frequent hard crashes. Hard to say what the cuase is, but that sort of thing can be worked out at least.

  • Its hard! I think that the difficulty stems from people not having good weapons/mods, and not having good (leveled) characters. A normal weapon mod alone will get you something like a 20% damage boost - the difference is noticeable. I feel like MP is leaning on the consumables this time around, both with boosters and things like RPGs. Some people are going to love that, and I will say that it feels like progressing difficulty in multiplayer requires a healthy dose of investment. You just have to choose if its going to be investing in time or money.

  • The jetpack makes normally clunky third person shooter gameplay a lot more fun and free. Bioware has made the maps with this in mind, and it hasn't got old yet being able to just boost around the place. In fact, if you don't use it to great effect, you can expect the enemy to overrun you. Its great!

  • Back in ME3 I disliked getting the Reaper enemies because they were a pain in the ass. Well here you get two out of three enemy types that are a pain in the ass, but in a challenging way and not a cheap, irritating way. Raider enemies are a pushover compared to Kett and the Robits - the former with pretty bad AI and a boss enemy foiled by any sort of cover, and the latter with incredibly dangerous enemies that have to be played around. The Kett is likely the worst offender with incredibly fast and invisible dogs that can stun, a boss enemy that can insta-kill, and a gatling gun enemy that makes standing outside of cover suicide. The robits have enemies that can fire through walls, hide and spawn suicide bombs, and have an incredibly tanky boss enemy that usually come at you in pairs. I don't feel that players have learned these guys yet.
 
Huh.

Browsing the ME reddit trying to find some good custom Sara faces, and it unless there are shenanigans going on with someone editing a supposed 'livestream' capture, the French 'default' Sara looks different when selecting quick start?

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect..._ryder_corrected_face_leaked/#bottom-comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qG2T0FUlZU&feature=youtu.be&t=14m54s

Woah woah woah...she is totally different. A huge improvement, imo. They clearly clicked default Ryder, too.
 
I seriously love going to the different planets in Andromeda and exiting the Galaxy Map and just looking at them from the bridge of the ship.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the "zoom to planet" thing they went with but... I dunno. That combined with the planet and space being visible from your ship actually is adding to my immersion immensely.
 

Kurumi

Member

Yeul

Member
I seriously love going to the different planets in Andromeda and exiting the Galaxy Map and just looking at them from the bridge of the ship.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the "zoom to planet" thing they went with but... I dunno. That combined with the planet and space being visible from your ship actually is adding to my immersion immensely.

Totally! I recall them saying they made a specific effort to have windows and make you feel like you were in space and they definitely achieved that. I spent some time during my trial going to the different star systems just to see the different planets through the windows of the Tempest. Color and lighting variation is great, I can't wait to see more once the game is out for real.
 
Huh.

Browsing the ME reddit trying to find some good custom Sara faces, and it unless there are shenanigans going on with someone editing a supposed 'livestream' capture, the French 'default' Sara looks different when selecting quick start?

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect..._ryder_corrected_face_leaked/#bottom-comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qG2T0FUlZU&feature=youtu.be&t=14m54s
What in the hell is going on with this game 😕😕😕

I'm really starting to think I should wait for some patches before getting into the game but I'm all pre-loaded and ready to go, I don't think I can wait :(
 
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