BioWare Shows Off Skills Trees and Weapon Mods for Mass Effect 3

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Never played 1 but 2 just wasn't that good. It was the Avatar Movie equivalent of video games. Lots of eye candy, highly polished, and ultimately shallow and forgettable. Other than the ASSUMING CONTROL meme there was nothing extraordinary about it.

The only really good part of the story was maybe the Tali trial and Shep's speech at the collector base. The rest was played straight sci-fi cliche leaning toward triteness.

The actual combat gameplay was a snoozefest to the point where I was dreading fighting scenes but the dialog sections were well done much like Kotor 1. Hopefully they do fix the leveling system so that the choices decide not only which color bullet you shoot people with but also create different options in the dialog system and areas outside of the chest high wall arenas.

I really hope that unlike 2 your choices actually have an effect on the game world. In 2 the only consequences you saw were some emails which was disappointing.

 

[manythings]

The inventory was a mess, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone at all who disputes that.

I dispute. How was it a mess? You had tabs for every type of gun, armour and grenades. Mods were accessible through mod option on each weapon's tab. HOW IS THIS A MESS? It wasn't hard to navigate, you knew where everything was, and a quick rundown of what you had allowed you to decide what was sellable or not. Weapons and armour had easy comparison options to see what object was better to equip.

Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2.

It was organised into groups, true. It was also mixed way the fuck up inside those groups, making it a bastard to find what you wanted. At times it would also just mix itself up again when you converted something to omnigel or changed the load out of a team member making it even harder to find what you wanted.

 

[Distorted Stu]

I loved 1 and 2. I dont care what they do too 3 aslogn as it still "feels" liek a ME game. Therefore Bioware have my money.

 

[4173]

I didn't think it was a mess, but I wouldn't have minded if they cut down on the "this item is inferior in every single way to the pieces you already have [enough copies to outfit your squad] but we'll keep having them drop throughout the game anyway."

To be clear, I'm not talking about trade offs or the Specter gear. I'm talking about pieces that are inferior in all stat categories to a freely available option and both drop in the same place in game.

 

[Irridium]

The inventory was a mess, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone at all who disputes that.

I dispute. How was it a mess? You had tabs for every type of gun, armour and grenades. Mods were accessible through mod option on each weapon's tab. HOW IS THIS A MESS? It wasn't hard to navigate, you knew where everything was, and a quick rundown of what you had allowed you to decide what was sellable or not. Weapons and armour had easy comparison options to see what object was better to equip.

Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2.

It was a pain in the ass to navigate with a controller, that's why it's a mess. When it gets filled up, it's just a nightmare. And it fills up fast, since Bioware thought it'd be a good idea to have every damn enemy drop stuff and then automatically give it to you.

 

[Woodsey]

The inventory was a mess, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone at all who disputes that.

I dispute. How was it a mess? You had tabs for every type of gun, armour and grenades. Mods were accessible through mod option on each weapon's tab. HOW IS THIS A MESS? It wasn't hard to navigate, you knew where everything was, and a quick rundown of what you had allowed you to decide what was sellable or not. Weapons and armour had easy comparison options to see what object was better to equip.

Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2.

It was cumbersome (300 copies of the same level 1 weapon and you have to convert them all individually), filled up every 5 minutes (because you couldn't choose what you picked up), had an arbitrary item-cap that couldn't even be increased, and was just boiled down to long-arse lists. There's a lot to be said for adding some pictures and whatnot to inventories; some visual flair.

"Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2."

Plenty of RPG players hated it, including myself. It wasn't complicated. Just shit.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Skills also have some more depth. The biotic skill Warp, for example, has six different branches that the player can pick. What's more, he or she can pick a different branch for each member of the crew, allowing a great degree of specialization within the party.

Six different branches of specialization? Consider my interest perked.

I LOVE skill trees.

 

[Moses Wolfenstein]

Actually from a user experience standpoint the inventory management system in 1 was total nonsense. There was no way to reduce multiple items to omni gel at once, there was no way to sort the view, no counter telling you how many things you had in your inventory (just a notification when you're approaching the limit), it was just bad interface design in almost every sense imaginable.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

..Yeah, they were guaranteed my money for the Collectors Edition from day 1. The youtube videos for skill trees and weapon mods simply further my enthusiasm for it.

Goddamnit, March 6, 2012. GET HERE ALREADY! D:

 

[duchaked]

the upgrade system annoyed me in ME1, but I'm attempting to finish the first game after having finished the 2nd, and it's not so bad anymore

so it's whatever. I've been pretty happy with the series as a whole (mining didn't bother me in 2, tho the Mako levels in 1 are still bugging me a lot)

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Logan, I swear to you.

Someone, somewhere is going to frecking whine about this. It's bioware fans, they complain about EVERYTHING.

And then someone will comment about the whining, and then we will all read the same arguments we've all seen a thousand times. And then it will all start up again in the comments of the next news article

 

[teebeeohh]

ok, with the stuff about weapon mods and skill trees this game is officially off my "shit until proven" list.

 

[funksobeefy]

Any pictures of these said trees?

 

[Aggieknight]

It was cumbersome (300 copies of the same level 1 weapon and you have to convert them all individually), filled up every 5 minutes (because you couldn't choose what you picked up), had an arbitrary item-cap that couldn't even be increased, and was just boiled down to long-arse lists. There's a lot to be said for adding some pictures and whatnot to inventories; some visual flair.

"Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2."

Plenty of RPG players hated it, including myself. It wasn't complicated. Just shit.

I'll admit it was cumbersome at times and complex, but I don't believe it was broken.

What was more frustrating was that of the 500 different guns and armor, 480 of them were useless. The weapon mods were very cool, but only a handful were useful.

Still they way over simplified in ME2 and between the two, I'll take the weapon system of the first.

I'm tentatively hopeful for ME3. If Bioware had never made DA2, I wouldn't be scared.

 

[AlternatePFG]

The inventory was a mess, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone at all who disputes that.

I dispute. How was it a mess? You had tabs for every type of gun, armour and grenades. Mods were accessible through mod option on each weapon's tab. HOW IS THIS A MESS? It wasn't hard to navigate, you knew where everything was, and a quick rundown of what you had allowed you to decide what was sellable or not. Weapons and armour had easy comparison options to see what object was better to equip.

Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2.

It was a pain in the ass to navigate with a controller, that's why it's a mess. When it gets filled up, it's just a nightmare. And it fills up fast, since Bioware thought it'd be a good idea to have every damn enemy drop stuff and then automatically give it to you.

Yeah, I just finished another playthrough of Mass Effect 1 yesterday and I was managing the invetory silliness pretty well, until the end of the game where enemies drop item upon item on top of you.

I don't think that there were too many RPG systems, it's just that they were handled poorly. ME2 ripped them all out and I thought it played better as a result but BioWare should have fixed it, instead of removing it completely. I still enjoy ME2's gameplay a bit more than the first one, and I wouldn't be angry with BioWare if they just went up the straight shooter with dialogue route for ME3, because I never considered the Mass Effect series to be an RPG series anyway.

My main worry for ME3 is that I hope the main story won't be terrible like it was in ME2.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I'm going to disagree with the "The first game had a few too many - or at least, too many for the systems to comfortably handle " bit, and say instead that it had too many RPG elements than the Gears and COD crowd could handle.

Ohohohohoho, how funny. Lay off on the "Gears and COD crowd" thing my friend, I belong to that crowd, yet I play the original Fallout and all that. Bloody hell RPG fans can be elitists...

Anyway, while saying that it had 'too many' RPG elements is a bit vague, what is undisputed is that it had a lot of clunky and poorly designed RPG mechanics. Especially on the consoles the inventory itself handled poorly, though it wasn't pretty on the PC either. Then there was the sorry fact that the vast majority of stuff you looted was plain useless, very rarely I actually upgraded weapons, not to mention the spam of weapon mods. Also, and what was even worse, the effects of a couple of the typical RPG number crunch parts were barely felt during the actual gameplay. Weapon sway?

Look, I'm all for making Mass Effect a more typical RPG, but having RPG mechanics for the sake of having RPG mechanics is just silly. Either do them right or don't do them at all. For ME2 they went with the latter option, which at the same time saddened me yet made ME2 overal more enjoyable to me than the first game. Luckily though, they seem to be going for the first option with ME3, and do the RPG elements right.

 

[duchaked]

"Again, it was only complicated to the current FPS crowd. And so it was dumbed down for ME2."

Plenty of RPG players hated it, including myself. It wasn't complicated. Just shit.

totally agree, it was simply bad design.
I've heard people say they felt it was lazy to just do away with it completely in ME2.
I don't entirely agree, but BioWare's bringing it back so hopefully it'll be more usable and I can stop comparing it to MS Excel lolll (I've had enough of spreadsheets in school)

 

[Richardplex]

The problem with ME1 wasn't 'there was too much custimisation oh god oh god kill it with fire turn it into gel' it was that they weren't all equally viable. One gun was always obviously superior to another, and the absurd amount of useless mods and ammo types you'd get was ridiculous. Clearing one room and getting six polonium rounds and 5 other useless mods that I had copies of copies of already wasn't cool. Silencers and scopes are good because silencing a gun at the beginning has the same effect as silencing a gun at the end. Also, was I the only person disappointed that there wasn't an actual tree anywhere, and they weren't being shown off?

Oh, and:

 

[James Crook]

Oh. My. God.
I want this game. I WANT IT.
WANT WANT WANT WANT!!
Can't wait for 2012... well, I actually can, but yeah, I really want the game...

All this weapon mod business in Mass Effect 1 was just as intrusive and annoying as someone shoving his genitals in your face, just went plain MIA in Mass Effect 2, just like the krogans' fertility (burn!) and were replaced by permanent weapon upgrades that piled one onto the other (damage upgrade to damage upgrade... *yawn*), without actually giving me any additional gameplay options, such as actual STEALTH, which would've been extremely useful during my Infiltrator runs of the game.

...Have I already mentioned I can't wait for this game?