No "Meaningless Stat Games" in Mass Effect 3

[Frotality]

so what is weapon damage calculated with? what do weapon upgrades do?

you know bioware, it was once said that math is the language in which god wrote the universe. making stupid statements like this to bring in new customers is one thing, but you are now actively promoting the game in the manner of "no really guyss, no hoity-toity RPG stuff here, so come on over and shoot stuff!".

is bioware trolling us? vague announcement after vague announcement denouncing everything their own fans hold dear? will "ME3 plot 'streamlined' to appeal to wider audience" be next? honestly, this is just getting stupid. "wider audience" doesnt usually entail borderline insults to your fans. EA must be trying to emulate activision's success by imitating kotick; thats the only explanation i can think of; this is just pure flamebait and bioware has to know it.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

When did Gears of War have all that? Did you all play some enhanced edition or something?

Well, CD Projekt Red was called up to make an enhanced edition featuring THREE Carmines, and a bunch of apologies over the bad voice acting. Gears of War: Enhanced Edition features over three hours of unseen dialogue, greatly tightening the story. Buy now!

Peach has a dirty Sanchez?

 

[Russian_Assassin]

Peach has a dirty Sanchez?

Thank you for the mental image and for ruining Mario for me forever.

 

[Danpascooch]

"We want to enrich the role-playing aspects of the game, while making sure that they're always meaningful in combat," she said. "We don't want to have any meaningless behind-the-scenes stat games, where the output is very minor in combat. Every single thing you do has a real impact in the battle."

What they mean by that last bit is "Every single thing you do will has a real impact only in the battle."
And I don't think any of the "Stat Games" in Mass Effect were meaningless.

You didn't think planet mining was meaningless? I sure did.

I think people are reading too much into this story, until more information presents itself, I'm going to treat this as if the headline reads "No boring arbitrary bullshit like planet mining"

 

[ZeZZZZevy]

I enjoyed ME2's story, but we're both entitled to our opinions.

As for DA2, that was an entirely different team, so it's fairly irrelevant IMO.

Considering how we don't really have any details at this point anyway, everything is complete conjecture. Also, in general I don't like judging a game based on its developer's past performance, rather, I judge the game based upon its own merits.

Spoiler: Fair enough, but you must admit that:

the bit where Shepard boards the Collector ship requires at minimum TIM, EDI, Shepard and Joker to all act like complete morons.

And that the whole "Harvest humans to make a baby Reaper" thing is more than a bit stupid. It would be several orders of magnitude easier, faster and more efficient (all things logical machines should be aiming for) to simply build a standard ship and throw a Reaper AI into it, or indoctrinate a slave and have it activate the Citadel relay.

And that the existence of the Collectors themselves is just dumb. There's literally no reason for the Reapers to have kept them alive for the last 50,000 years. It was a waste of resources (again, something nothing that follows logic as computers/AI must would do), especially since they almost certainly would have no need/use for them.

And the fact that Shepard is "the Chosen One!" for some utterly arbitrary reason. There's literally nothing Shepard can do that someone else couldn't. There is no magic desiny/prophecy or whatever the hell else is usually used as the excuse for these plotlines. Thus, there's absolutely no reason for TIM to spend 4 billion credits resurrecting him.

I could keep going all day, but you get the idea.

Yea, I'd much rather judge the game on its own merits, but there's no way to do that. And in that case, it's not unreasonable to take a look at a creator's previous work and extrapolate how their current project will turn out. It's the same thing for any producer, be it for cars, music, movies, whatever.

I'll take M. Night Shamalamalakum as the perfect example. He made a couple really good movies, and he was awesome. Then he made nothing but crap for the last decade. Judging by his past performance, it's not unreasonable to conclude whatever movie he's making now is going to suck, just like the last 4-5.

PS - While I was writing this, I definitely realized just how apt this comparison is. Bioware really is the M Night Shyamalan of the games industry.

Edit: Your partially right about the whole different teams thing, but again, you can generally judge a future product of a company/person/group by their previous work, and Bioware's has been getting steadily worse.

I never really read into the story that much, but thinking about it you do have a point. As for the past performance issue, I still think that while it can give you a good idea, it's still not absolute.

 

[Saelune]

Bioware is getting senile. The king going mad in their later years before being dethrowned.

Are you going to pick him up and throw him off his throne? Heh, DeThrowned.

I know you are a nice person, so I wont be mean, but I get really irked when people mock me for typing something wrong, usually something stupid that is rarely seen written out.

 

[Compatriot Block]

So, I have to ask. Where did all of you guys get a copy of Mass Effect 3 from? I would sure like one. Then I can play it and join in this discussion about how they ruined the game by making it appeal to more people and what exactly "meaningless behind-the-scenes stat games" means in terms of what they changed. Because all I've got right now is a couple of articles that are so vague that they don't really tell me anything. So please, tell me where I can get a copy of the game so I can play it and join this conversation withe the rest of you.

...Unless none of you played it either, and are all just getting your panties in a twist over some vague statements that currently have no meaning. That would certainly be silly, wouldn't it?

No point, man. The only way that some people will stop screaming that it's ruined forever is if BioWare just stops releasing information entirely.

The constant rage is so disappointing. There is a difference between "I am concerned that this is a change that I won't enjoy," and "BioWare sucks, Mass Effect sucks, etc." And at this point, Mass Effect 3 could come out packaged with a damn dirt-to-diamonds convertor and the indisputably best game-play and story ever, and some people would still be crying "Ruined forever!"

Before I'm quoted again, I will repeat that there is a big difference between reasonable concern and baseless complaining.

 

[uc.asc]

So, all those bloody points you had to spend just to be able to use a sniper rifle was meaningful? And if you didn't have the skill, you couldn't use it worth crap? That's meaningful and fun?

Actually, yeah. I liked that in ME1 you would gradually specialize into a playstyle you liked over the course of the game, with weapons or skills you used and invested in gradually becoming much more effective. There were advantages to investing a lot in one skill or spreading points over multiple skills, and enough options that you had to make decisions more involved than what to max out next. Even within each class you could make multiple builds which were effective in different ways.

Using the example of sniper rifles to compare the two games, in ME1 they were initially tricky to use, yet effective with some luck, and became devastating and highly accurate over the course of the game with investment in the skill and appropriate weapon configuration. In ME2 you dropped a few points into the rifle skill at the beginning and spent the rest of the game grinding instakill headshots.

Building a character around your play style and configuring it to your liking makes that character yours in a way that masterchief never can be. I don't enjoy dicking with stats much, but being able to configure a character (and their weapons, please) in a way which is specific to you really adds to the game.

ME1 accomplished this. Borderlands, which had a very different skill system, also accomplished this. ME2 didn't.

 

[Agayek]

I never really read into the story that much, but thinking about it you do have a point. As for the past performance issue, I still think that while it can give you a good idea, it's still not absolute.

Of course it's not absolute. It is not unreasonable to assume trends will continue though. There's no way to say whether or not ME3 will be good at this point. They may somehow pull a winner out of their ass. It's just not the way their games have been going lately.

We'll see next year sometime. I really want it to be good, and I'm almost certainly going to play it, if only to see the conclusion, but I don't have a whole lot of hope left for it.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

combat in ME 2 SUCKED BALLZ, it was 2/3 of the game and it was totally boring. The only remotely interesting scenario was when you had to stay by your psionic dude in the collector base.

If I wanted to play gears of war I would join a frat and tell everyone my dad owns a dealership.

I have a better idea though, how about leveling choices that have an affect OUTSIDE of combat, you know like back in the day when story and gameplay were at least slightly integrated....

ME2 really was the generic hollywood blockbuster of gaming. Pretty to look at, polished, well executed, and ultimately forgettable.

Can anyone name a scene in ME2 that was nearly as cool or memorable as force choking bastila's mom or mind controllign the wookie into killing his best friend in KOTOR 1?

the whole stupid

Reapers are made from

Spoiler

PEOPLE!!1!!!oneone!!

thing is so scholcky it could easily come from a bad 80s 3d movie

 

[Sandytimeman]

This accurately summarizes my feeling on this issue. Why the hell do RPG developers keep removing the RPG from their games?

Same here, I'm just glad this is the end of the ME games so I don't end up playing a full FPS in ME4

 

[Duskflamer]

img

This accurately summarizes my feeling on this issue. Why the hell do RPG developers keep removing the RPG from their games?

Same here, I'm just glad this is the end of the ME trilogy so I don't end up playing a full FPS until ME4

Fix'd. I recall Bioware saying that they wanted to continue making games in the Mass Effect setting once the trilogy is done, certainly enough background details to have more stories in. And in the direction they're currently going, there's good reason to think it would be full out FPS at that point.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Haters gonna hate...before the game even comes out. Looking forward to ME 3 and everything it brings.

 

[LaughingJester]

A little curious how this will come off in the end product... I am not looking for a 'Gears 3 clone'

i quite like that I can get things done without having to blast my way through every cantina

 

[Jabberwock King]

Here's what I'm wondering

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever, we get it, combat is more fluid and smooth and whatever.

What about the non-combat aspects? I want to know where I'll be traveling, will vehicles return? Will these still be linear corridors? What customization options do I have? Who is on my side and who isn't? What is the state of the Citadel and the Council in the wake of Earth's invasion? C'mon, it's supposed to be a friggin' Space Opera, not another action-packed blockbuster as much as we may love those at times!

My thoughts exactly. All of these announcements about Mass Effect's combat are making me nervous. Gears of War and Call of Duty are where we go when we want mindless shooting, Bioware games are where we go when we want messy moral decisions and fantastic and creative environments.

Get that straight, Bioware.

How are messy moral decisions and fantastic and creative environments mutually exclusive with shooting from behind chest-high walls?

They're not, I just feel that BioWare have been unnecessarily pumping up the combat to their game when they've given us little information about anything else. It's great they have more stramlined combat, whatever, I don't care about that right now, I want the juicier bits to this.

I'm willing to guess the story's still going to be most of the content - their marketing team probably just figures that anyone who's likely to be into the game for the story doesn't need to be pitched to. Even if you look at something like DA2, which was widely considered "dumbed down," they focused mostly on the story (at the expense of the environments lol).

I believe I saw somewhere that Bioware was opting to keep major story points under wraps for development. If you look back on how much information from ME2's plot was revealed before release, you'd notice that it covered over half of the story. Admittedly, most of the story was wrapped up with squad recruitment and loyalty missions, and with the squad's co-operation in the suicide mission being one of the major selling points for the game, they had to focus on it. Judging from that, Bioware wants to spoil as little of ME3's story as possible for promotional purposes. So if they restrict that, they will have to focus on gameplay features instead.

Spoiler

I recall the only things I really didn't know until I played the game were the origins of the collectors and the space station at the center of the galaxy growing a 100 ft. tall Terminator

 

[pearcinator]

LOL Mass Effect 3 is getting a lot of hate recently...

Honestly, this thread is about getting rid of meaningless upgrades? Im happy with that!

I reckon E3 will get people more excited again, people just seem to find something to nit-pick about and recently its Mass Effect 3. Tune in next week and itll be about [blank] being less [blank] and more like [blank]

 

[uc.asc]

the whole stupid

Reapers are made from

Spoiler

PEOPLE!!1!!!oneone!!

thing is so scholcky it could easily come from a bad 80s 3d movie

It is sort of corny, and I have a nasty suspicion that it was retconned during the making of ME2 rather than being part of the idea from the beginning. I would have preferred that the reapers remain inscrutable, though after thinking about the idea for a bit I did concluded that it's an interesting mechanic. If you play with the idea for a while you can end up coming to some interesting conclusions, including that the reapers may actually be the good guys.

 

[Zhukov]

By the sounds of it it's basically going to be ME2's combat with some minor tweaks.

I completely approve. In my book, actual gameplay beats adding 1.5% to my open-a-bloody-box ability any day.

EDIT: Wow. The rage is still strong in this one. But I notice that it is slowing morphing from blind rage to slightly reasonable rage. That's nice to see.

 

[Lt. Vinciti]

TO THE ESCAPE PODS!

SS Mass Effect is coming out of orbit...


After watching Dragon Age II fall over...did you really expect ME3 to not take a deathdive?

Seems Bioware is so pumped on The Old Republic that they can fuck over their own games and can recover the loss they will take with this dead franchises...