Mass Effect 2: The Drudgery of Scanning

[Jandau]

What the fuck are you two even talking about?
Does either of you remember? And don't cheat by reading the first quotes.

Oh, that's easy. He REALLY liked the Mako. I didn't. He really hates scanning. I find it tolerable and a lesser evil when compared to the Mako, at the very least far less time consuming.

He thinks Bioware copped out by removing the Mako instead of fixing it or putting something more ambitious in its place. I object to his overstating the problem and blowing a minor aspect of the game out of proportion.

And we did it with passive agressive sarcasm!

*snip*

Well, for one thing, thank you sir for a fresh discussion regarding this subject. It was fun, but I'm going to go with "Agree to disagree" on this one. Kudos for well written replies!

 

[Caligulove]

It could have been implemented better. No doubt things will change in the future. But overall I was able to scan enough to get enough minerals and not feel like I had been scanning for a lon period of time. I wouldn't say it was entirely fun all of the time but it was easier than getting minerals in ME which also had no point to it. I was just happy there was a point to it and that I was able to get my ship upgraded and all my weapons besides the pistol nEarly maxed out.

I do miss the Mako stuff every now and then though. It felt more like exploring. And while the new shuttle missions keep things more streamlined... I like exploring and finding little anomolies of dead miners who crashed on their rover and Reading the surprisingly depressing blurb about them and how they seemed to "starve to death- not uncommon for frontier miners"

Of course, didn't miss it enough to not play ME2

 

[Boxmeister]

What? This guy's nuts. The scanning minigame was the most worthwhile replacement for epically traveling the planet surface via a deadly ATV tank on jets ever. Every day I just can't get going in the morning unless I stare at a quivering wavelength for several minutes. The reverberating sensation every time I launch a probe shatters the very fiber of my being and reassembles it in a quivering technocolor dream. Yes, this decision more than any other in Mass Effect 2 gives me great hope for the future of the series.

"epically traveling the planet surface via a deadly ATV tank on jets"? Oh, you mean endless trudging over featureless wastelands in a toy car with poor handling and atrocious physics. Yeah, it was so much better spending hours upon hours bouncing around aimlessly just to do a few quests, as opposed to spending 1 hour out of a 30-hour playthrough on a minigame and be done with it... [/sarcasm]

Yes, exactly, I think it's important that we understand that games should not try to do anything ambitious at all, for fear that it might be in some way boring. Instead, they need to replace any such elements with things that are convenient. Like any decent human being, I don't want a 5 course meal, I'd rather have some instant noodles in a cup prepared with lukewarm tap water. I'm a busy man, I don't have time to be entertained.

Yes, you and others like you are very busy people and have little time for mistakes of others. So when you order and get a five course meal you will not accept that your salad was sliced instead of shredded, since that is the difference that turns a brilliant meal into a total gastronomical disaster. Instead, you'll do what any responsible individual and go badmouth the restaurant around. Who cares if the meal was pure bliss to the sense of taste? The salad was cut the wrong way and that's all that counts!

Exactly! I would be completely in the wrong to badmouth a restaurant for replacing their Duck A L'Orange with a single steamed lima bean. After all, that Duck was less than perfect and all that inconvenient chewing took time out of my day that I was planning on spending on solving the great mysteries of the universe. In the end, when that lima bean turned out to cost the same amount as the far larger meal, I wasn't outraged. No, I stormed the kitchen and covered the cook with big slobbery kisses for saving me all the unnecessary effort a more substantial meal would have given me. Besides, that lima bean as absolutely delicious, so delicious it was well worth regurgitating and eating again for hours.

What the fuck are you two even talking about?
Does either of you remember? And don't cheat by reading the first quotes.

Good question! It's not at all obvious that when I'm referring to a smaller convenient meal as opposed to a larger but less convenient meal that I might be referring to the driving sequences in Mass Effect 1 versus the scanning mini-game in Mass Effect 2. It might actually require that somebody do something thoroughly unreasonable, like play the games or read the thread.

You guys are #*$&ing hilarious to watch. Cheveyo, thank you for asking the question that crossed my mind mere seconds before I read it It just furthered the comedy lol.

It may have sucked to get stuck on the side of a mountain in the Mako for the umpteenth time, but jumping around in those jets sure was fun Both are good concepts for minigames, but they also both need tweeking. My guess is in the third game they'll take the most popular of the two and adapt it. At least that's what I'm hoping... they may just take another blind leap and try something new, only with the knowledge that "some people hated both of them" to guide them.

 

[Altorin]

I finished the whole game from start to finish and did all of the important missions and NEVER EVEN ONCE did I attempt to explore a planet that was not important to the plot and i never ran out of ammo or supplies (i was playing on normal). It sounds like its you who made the game boring rather then the actual game.

you know it's possible to make it through the game with people actually surviving to the end.

 

[Nomanslander]

Don't have ME2, not planning on getting it, but I loved the mako. I honestly didnt see people's problem with it. I thought it was fun to just land on a planet and explore in my rover, jumping over ridges and stuff.

The problem most people had with the Mako was the way it maneuvered, it had a tendency to turn way to fast at high speeds sending you off flying in a direction you didn't want to go. Plus, considering how steep a lot of the terrain in the game was there were a lot of cases you'd end up flying off a mountain into an abyss or lava.

Finally combat in the Mako was just boring, well at least for me, driving back and forth avoiding slow moving projectiles shooting at at those spider walkers (or whatever) that took 1000 hits to kill just wasn't fun.

 

[Altorin]

Don't have ME2, not planning on getting it, but I loved the mako. I honestly didnt see people's problem with it. I thought it was fun to just land on a planet and explore in my rover, jumping over ridges and stuff.

The problem most people had with the Mako was the way it maneuvered, it had a tendency to turn way to fast at high speeds sending you off flying in a direction you didn't want to go. Plus, considering how steep a lot of the terrain in the game was there were a lot of cases you'd end up flying off a mountain into an abyss or lava.

Finally combat in the Mako was just boring, well at least for me, driving back and forth avoiding slow moving projectiles shooting at at those spider walkers (or whatever) that took 1000 hits to kill just wasn't fun.

a lot of cliffs required you to drive sideways up them.

the mako would have been a lot more interesting had they made it so the thruster didn't always point perpendicular to the length of the car (IE, always straight down).. If it could give you a little boosty up those tough cliffs, that would have been a lot funner.

 

[SpireOfFire]

what is the ideal ammount of time i should spend on one planet mining?

 

[squid5580]

Don't have ME2, not planning on getting it, but I loved the mako. I honestly didnt see people's problem with it. I thought it was fun to just land on a planet and explore in my rover, jumping over ridges and stuff.

The problem most people had with the Mako was the way it maneuvered, it had a tendency to turn way to fast at high speeds sending you off flying in a direction you didn't want to go. Plus, considering how steep a lot of the terrain in the game was there were a lot of cases you'd end up flying off a mountain into an abyss or lava.

Finally combat in the Mako was just boring, well at least for me, driving back and forth avoiding slow moving projectiles shooting at at those spider walkers (or whatever) that took 1000 hits to kill just wasn't fun.

Lava? Where was this lava planet? The only planet you could ever fall into lava was Feros (I think that was the name anyways). And that planet gave you a nice smooth road to drive on.

My gripe about 1 was getting 7/8ths up a mountain to realize you can't make it to the top. To spend 10 more minutes figuring out how to get back down again.

Had the same gripe about Oblivion. Minus the getting down part.

 

[Amnestic]

My gripe about 1 was getting 7/8ths up a mountain to realize you can't make it to the top. To spend 10 more minutes figuring out how to get back down again.

Smash the booster button when you're on an angle. Enjoy the fall

If it could give you a little boosty up those tough cliffs, that would have been a lot funner.

Doing that would have fixed 99% of the problems the Mako had.

 

[Liverandbacon]

Even once I edited the games .ini to make the scanner go ~6x faster, and set maximum probes to 99 so that I didn't have to ferry myself back and forth to the refuel station after every system, that minigame was still frustrating and boring. Considering how miserable it was for me, I feel really bad for all of you who had to use the scanner at its normal speed. Hateful as it was, I preferred the Mako, though that's not saying much.

 

[JediMB]

The scanning portion of ME2 got really boring really quickly for me... at first.

Then I got into a habit of only doing quick sweeps of the planets, and pick out the larger deposits from every planet I passed. Only at the sign of eezo did I bother with more thorough sweeps. As it was, I ended up with 100k+ eezo and around 300k of the other resources, with minimal effort, time and boredom.

At that point I realized I was running out of credits, though, so I couldn't afford the final purchasable upgrades, and as such didn't have anything to do with all my resources. Bah.

 

[dibblywibbles]

there needs to be more platinum in the galaxy. or maybe I shouldn't have paid the 50k for anti scar lab. but my shepard is supposed to be pretty AND a badass. healing depends on how nice you are? I want to punch the goody two shoes who came up with that. but I agree that mining was boring. seriously at least you got drive around in a truck and smoke the occasional thresher maw in the first one. I like the idea of making more upgrades for exploration though. then maybe I would've actually paid attention to it instead of waiting for the rumble of my controller. if I was to make a suggestion about how to improve it I would say scrap it completely. mining is for slaves and miners. I'm the commander of a ship dammit not an intergalactic prospector. give me money to buy from colonies? or better yet a little bit of I scratch your back, you scratch mine(oh no! you've got mercs threatening your settlement? I can take care of it but I'm gonna want some of your palladium in return) or kill them all and just take it! but what do I know? I loved the game irregardless(haha!)

 

[JoGribbs]

Its getting quite funny how much people are banging on about this - clearly this is a sign that it was really an amazing game for most, yet they're still whining about the tiniest element of gameplay.

It's not tiny, it's the foundation of the entire upgrades system, and it's boring as fuck.

On my first play through I thought I was doing something wrong; the rest of the game is so well designed, yet there's this mini-game that's fundemental to the experience that takes ages, and isn't in any way fun. I just assumed Bioware wouldn't make such a stupid mistake, but they did. I'd still say it was one of the best games I've ever played, but If I try and do another playthrough I'm not going to sit there and mine planets for hours on end like I did first time.

My solution would be to make the cursor faster, and to tell the player exactly how many deposits there are on a planet, and what minerals are in said deposits. If I want some Element Zero, I would just be able to pick a planet where it's abundant and go get it, rather than scanning 500 random planetoids.

I don't think it would hurt that much if the game even told you where the deposits were on the planet's surface. Sure it'd be easy, but it'd be miles better than what's already there.

 

[Woodsey]

Its getting quite funny how much people are banging on about this - clearly this is a sign that it was really an amazing game for most, yet they're still whining about the tiniest element of gameplay.

It's not tiny, it's the foundation of the entire upgrades system, and it's boring as fuck.

On my first play through I thought I was doing something wrong; the rest of the game is so well designed, yet there's this mini-game that's fundemental to the experience that takes ages, and isn't in any way fun. I just assumed Bioware wouldn't make such a stupid mistake, but they did. I'd still say it was one of the best games I've ever played, but If I try and do another playthrough I'm not going to sit there and mine planets for hours on end like I did first time.

My solution would be to make the cursor faster, and to tell the player exactly how many deposits there are on a planet, and what minerals are in said deposits. If I want some Element Zero, I would just be able to pick a planet where it's abundant and go get it, rather than scanning 500 random planetoids.

I don't think it would hurt that much if the game even told you where the deposits were on the planet's surface. Sure it'd be easy, but it'd be miles better than what's already there.

I think I mined 2 planets in between each major and each loyalty mission (sometimes more if I was really close to affording an upgrade) and collected the rest of the minerals during actual missions.

I upgraded the ship with the cannon and shields, upgraded weapons plenty of times, and had all but 2 team members (Zaeed and Mordin) survive.

Why you were mining for hours on end is beyond me.

 

[JoGribbs]

I think I mined 2 planets in between each major and each loyalty mission (sometimes more if I was really close to affording an upgrade) and collected the rest of the minerals during actual missions.

I upgraded the ship with the cannon and shields, upgraded weapons plenty of times, and had all but 2 team members (Zaeed and Mordin) survive.

Why you were mining for hours on end is beyond me.

I'm struggling to understand your position as well. I played through almost the entire game before started mining for minerals. Even then I had to do it for a good while before I could afford most of the upgrades.

 

[Woodsey]

I think I mined 2 planets in between each major and each loyalty mission (sometimes more if I was really close to affording an upgrade) and collected the rest of the minerals during actual missions.

I upgraded the ship with the cannon and shields, upgraded weapons plenty of times, and had all but 2 team members (Zaeed and Mordin) survive.

Why you were mining for hours on end is beyond me.

I'm struggling to understand your position as well. I played through almost the entire game before started mining for minerals. Even then I had to do it for a good while before I could afford most of the upgrades.

Well that'll be why you were mining for hours then.

I paced myself through the game, so it was never an issue.