Razgon
2021
Cal - That is definitely not what I am seeing. Either that, or I am really blind when I play but I actually think I’d notice it if it was that bad.
I’ll have to check sometime tonight when I get a chance to play
Joe_M
2022
Brian: I think you’ll find ME3 startlingly similar to ME2, so much so you’ll be a little baffled by posts that claim it’s a departure from the mission structure of the latter. It’s not. There are certainly some refinements in terms of scale and a massive improvement in side missions, but they haven’t reinvented the wheel here.
I spent most of last night doing the scanning stuff. There seems to be no draw back to doing it, and even if you get “caught” by the reapers, just click LOAD and you’ll be right at the beginning of the sector you just got caught in. Since the scannable objects are statically placed, a little practice and you can 100% every sector from the moment you get control of your ship.
Cal: Yeah, those graphics are definitely… wrong.
And yes, the whole thing is like an expanded ME2. That’s not surprising, is it?
Oooh - let me guess - ATI card?
Speaking of textures though, I just remembered we didn’t get a texture pack for PC. That’s why the textures look so poor. In DA2 they were good enough, though not as good as TW2.
No and yes. In theory, more enemies means more variety and opportunity for flanking by the AI. That’s better than peeling away the layers of a few tough enemies. (But like it was mentioned, I hope we encounter a couple of those multi-layer enemies eventually.)
The problem is still the waves. What’s cool for 1 or 2 rounds becomes silly when you notice the clown car. So far some of the encounters have hid it well. Other times I’m just waiting for it to stop.
Also, these waves train you to use powers instead of ammo to fight, because some maps have almost no spare “thermal sinks”, and who knows when the waves will finally stop; and yet shooting is more interesting gameplay than power use, because you hardly have to aim the powers.
I didn’t think about this. I’m using an Adept so I don’t worry about ammo as much. I’m bringing an assault rifle along this time to see if I can still enjoy the shooting a little. I like the combo powers a lot more but I’m worried they’ll get old too fast.
Joe_M
2027
Thermal clips respawn endlessly, incidentally, so while there may not be a lot of them littered about the battlefield, you can keep grabbing the same one every minute or so.
Cal
2028
nvidia 580 2gb sadly.
My friends 360 version looks far superior to mine :(
Oh well seems to be a lot of posts on the bioware forums, maybe there will be a fix for it tonight.
Yeah, I’m not thrilled with the SP missions that are just skirmish versions of the MP maps. By the final wave, bad guys literally spawn right in front of me. POOF “Hey, it’s a bad guy!” It really pulls me out of the game.
Those missions are probably a lost cause.
I’m digging the “Preparation for War” tactical metagame. I’m only about 8 hours into the game, so maybe it turns to suck later, but for now I’m intrigued.
I hate the camera, especially after re-playing some Dragon Age 2. Enemies can walk right up to you without you noticing them. I think you’d have to be a real masochist to play this on harder than normal diff. Half the challenge is fighting the mechanics.
If only Femshep didn’t look so broken, I’d be a happy camper.
Definitely agreed!
The flanking is good enough that I felt like I was hitting a wall in Grissom Academy until I realized I could run up the stairs to take out the guys above me. They had even mounted a turret up there that shredded us! That was satisfying despite the instadeaths.
Turrets have a long pause before they shoot, but man if they catch you off guard they pump out a surprising amount of damage. They’re probably the thing that offs me most frequently in multiplayer, and it’s wise to check for them first before making a flank run when you face Cerberus, especially if you see any Engineers.
Question - I found some sort of tech that says it improves Shepherd’s armor by 5%. Is that for any armor he wears or will it just improve the specific suit he has on now? Just wondering if I should wait and settle on a specific armor set before using it. Anyone know? Thanks.
Yeah, I had that too, and had to fall back on Pulling enemies and letting Anderson shoot them. Probably doesn’t happen on lower difficulties, so they missed it?
There are weapon mods that talk about my shots penetrating armor for a certain distance, albeit with reduced damage. Does this mean my shots will go through the shield and hit the guy behind it?
These mods kick ass. I’d originally read them as lowering damage – but after testing in the firing range it looks like that’s only when you’re actually penetrating obstacles.
I don’t know how well it penetrates Guardians’ shields, as I haven’t faced any since I switched to using them. They massively boost damage against armor though!
I love that they added a firing range for ME3, as there is a lot of subtle variation between weapons that isn’t apparent from their stats. Heavy damage weapons do much better against armor than their stats suggest, for example – your DPS isn’t strictly Damage X RoF.
Oh, and as far as “Galactic Readiness”:
- I got mine to 100% after several hours of multiplayer. Quite easy.
- But then when I logged back on later it had already dropped to 98%…
Maxing out the bar seems quite easy. I’ve been playing normally (not grinding sidequests, I tend to hate sidequests), and my bar is well above the “minimum” marker and well on its way to full. If I played a few rounds of multiplayer, it would be full.
That’s a carryover from ME2. Most of the weapons had hidden multipliers under the hood - some were better at damaging health, others armor, other shields, other barriers. Some of the descriptions hinted at this (weapon x is good against shields, etc.). The ME wiki had/has all of this info (not sure if it is all updated for ME3 though).
Yeah the slow decrease is a good thing. I assume it will continue to drop over time. That means you can still play for a “bad ending” a few months from now.
In fact, that might be the best way to go. You can skip the side stuff during a second playthrough where you probably don’t want to bother with it anyway. Speaking of which, is there a New Game+ in ME3? Can we change classes for it?
Actually, I think it’s an entirely different system, though some of the moving parts are the same.
For example, the different weapons all seem to do the same damage vs. Shields as they do vs. Health, which was not the case in ME2. And the armor effect I noted feels more like a damage reduction vs. penetration effect than ME2’s relatively slight variance in damage multiplier.
Yeah, I’m finding my enjoyment of the game is getting sabotaged with those missions. I think I’m going to drop the difficulty down to wuss level and plow through them that way. I don’t find the horde fights enjoyable at all in SP.
Which is odd because I find the normal mission combats to be pretty fun.
