On the Ball: Scanning, for Fun and Profit

[Dhatz]

it's the fucking pandemic DLC disease. there is gonna be hovertank to replace mako and some missions with it in some retarded DLC. this game could be actually better than the first one, if they didn't try to sell it's amputated organs back to it.

How could you not enjoy the Mako!? It was fun.

i think console gamers didn't like if because it was to much nonstandard because of the mass reduction via eezo.
C a n t u n d e r stand why EDI c a n t s c a n it.

 

[ElephantGuts]

I agree, I loathed the scanning system. Especially for a completionist like me, who felt compelled to thoroughly explore every solar system, which meant meticulously scanning over every inch of every single planet. Eventually I decided it was ridiculous, and just scanned rich planets as I needed resources, but still, it was terrible.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Awful, awful minigame. I basically spent the whole time while I was scanning on the internet with my other hand, watching youtube videos, commenting on the escapist, altering facebook, rearranging my desktop, keeping my mind off how bloody boring it was.

I liked the Mako damn it! Bring it back, or at least don't make the replacement so annoying.

I have my own little theory though, that the scanning minichore was Bioware punishing people for complaining so much about the Mako, because I honestly don't think it could have got past the testing phase unless one of the dev team got very annoyed about how much spam was in his mailbox about the Mako, and thought to himself 'you thought that was tedious and annoying? How about this then?'

In short, don't complain to Bioware, or they will eat your soul with an even worse minigame!

 

[AlternatePFG]

I hated the scanning process of this game. It was probably the only thing I really disliked.

It gets better on the second playthrough, when you get like 50k of every resource, but it's still a pain in the ass.

 

[CuddlyCombine]

I'm on PC, so maybe we got lucky here, but all I had to do was ramp up my mouse sensitivity and slide my mouse in large circles. I did this for half an hour after doing Freedom's Hope and ended up with enough resources to last me the whole game through (including all ship and squad upgrades). I think the key, to me at least, was doing it all in one go; if you break it up into 'manageable' chunks, it becomes the nasty monster looming around the corner of every mission. It's better to do it all at once.

 

[TheBluesader]

I missed the Mako. Not necessarily because I liked the Mako sequences from ME1 all that much: they pretty much universally sucked. But that said, they FELT right. If you wanted to see what was on a planet, than Bucko, get your butt down there in the wonky dune buggy / tank and see for yourself. Sure, we know that probes and scans are realistic for determining what a planet has. But how can a probe launch return minerals to the ship? Does it launch its own return probe that has to be picked up? Does it teleport entire mountains? At least the Mako, or something like it, would make it feel like you were actually picking something up and bringing it back with you.

Like other people here, I'm playing ME2 on the PC. The mouse works perfectly for scanning, and from what Jordan is saying, I do not look forward to doing it with the controller. With the mouse you can just hold the right (I think it's right) button down and wiggle all over the surface, and then super-spin the planet with a swish to the right or left. It seems like the scanning thing was made for the PC, so why they'd use the same system on the console version seems like a lack of play-testing.

What would have made it all better is a some kind of "All System Scan" you could do upon entering a system. You could get some kind of easy-yet-time-consuming minigame to make it work, something like the tube / circuitry puzzles in BioShock / System Shock II. They could even add a cargo cap to the Normandy II, so that you'd be forced to dock and sell / trade the minerals you didn't need so you could free up the room for more eezo.

But that thing about not being able to buy minerals - that's pretty lame. They should also populate each system with a bunch of ships that you could pirate / destroy / salvage for minerals, for Renegade cred. We're supposedly working with the racist terrorists in Cerberus, right? Like they're not already attacking non-human ships and hacking non-human banks for all their inexplicable money?

If I can come up with all of this after about 6 hours of gameplay at someone else's house, it's hard to believe that BioWare couldn't. But then again, DLC...

 

[fozzy360]

I can understand the concept of mining, since this is an RPG we're playing here. Grinding for upgrades and what not is something to be expected from this genre. It's an interesting concept that could have been much more novel than it is now were not for the speed of the scan. Look, I have to say that I didn't mind it. I actually liked working for the upgrades I wanted, but that fact that reticule takes forever to move across the planet is annoying. Sure you can perform the fanning technique, but it's not perfect, and you can miss pockets of minerals. Since I'm a perfectionist, I tend to fully scan each and every planet, and fully scanning one world can take more than five minutes. There are dozens of worlds in the game and scanning each and every one of them is a daunting task that will take hours. I loved ME2, but even I realize that this part of the game needs some improvement. If it makes a comeback in the next game, it'd be great if Bioware addresses this issue by making it more intuitive than it is now.

On a side note, I really enjoyed the Mako in the first game. The controls were sloppy, of course, but the concept of landing on other worlds and (briefly) exploring them while using the Mako's thrust to launch yourself off the highest peak was pretty fun. Then again, I'm easily entertained.

 

[Plazmatic]

Tips to speed up mining, and stop whining

1. ignore gas giants
2. get all the resources you can on normal missions
3. only scan rich planets
4. get the scan upgrade
5. get Mass effect 2 on the PC so you don't have to worry about your stupid console problems.

The mako wasn't that bad when you could use it on missions that were worth while, I wish they had a combination of the two.

 

[aaron552]

Element Zero is generally found on planets with the word "garden" in their type ("pre-garden", "post-garden") or on planets/moons that have "eezo" or "element zero" in the description. In general, if a planet is green-colored it's likely to have eezo.

 

[thenoblitt]

I actually enjoyed the Mako, i did not however enjoy the mining

 

[carpathic]

The mining is really quite vexing. The worst is when you have a surplus of the minerals and realize that you spent too much time mining, certainly more than you needed to. That, sir, is aggravating.

 

[Jared]

I really did not like that mine game at all...it bored me to tears, so badly. And element Zero *Foams at mouth!*

 

[Cliff_m85]

On the Ball: Scanning, for Fun and Profit

Mass Effect 2's mining minigame actually made me miss the Mako.

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When you play through the game again you keep all your upgrades so you won't need to choose whether to upgrade your gun or save people....your gun will be upgraded at the very beginning.

It tells you this when you finish the game. Only communists don't read the notices at the end of games....commie.

 

[m_jim]

The problem with the Mako wasn't the Mako, it was the barren planets and all the jagged mountains you had to drive up. And the Make sucks for climbing up mountains.

If they took away all the mountains, and maybe added a little variety, something tells me the Mako sections wouldn't have been so hated.

Agreed. If they made the vertical jets more powerful on the Mako so that you could jump around and enjoy the silly physics engine, it would have been bearable. As it was, you had to inch your way up sharp cliffs, hoping to find a short cut through the geometry of the mountain, or just sweat it out and take the long way around.

 

[kibayasu]

I only scanned the "Rich" and "Good" planets that open up at the start (before Horizon, that is), combined with most or all of the minerals you can pick up on missions, and still had plenty of minerals at the end of game.

But that first playthrough, when I didn't know this, was a very tedious process. One thing, and one thing only, could have made this all better and that is simply a "Fog of War" on the planets to show you where you had already scanned.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Mass Effect 2's mining minigame actually made me miss the Mako.

We get Mako's replacement, the Hammerhead in a future DLC, will still prolly have to scan from orbit to mine. Its why I scan and mine as soon as I can just to get it out of the way.

All in all there is only about 160k Element Zero in the game that can be mined, roughly 650k for the other 3, but I stop scanning when a planet con's as Poor.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Actually Jordan, it doesn't matter if you head straight for the Omega 4 relay right after your crew gets abducted. Because no matter what you do, no matter how long it takes you to rescue them, you'll only find Dr. Chakwas and Kelly in the Collector base.

 

[ItsAPaul]

On the PC it's not all bad, but it was slightly annoying that I had to comb every system I went to or I'd fall behind. I'm pretty sure it wasn't on the top of the list for fixing before release and some DLC will address the problem later. God forbid someone has a ton of minerals that they HAVE to have in their first playthrough (since you get everything you need for a long while on your later playthroughs).

 

[squid5580]

I think the mineral types are hard coded to the planets, I found the bulk of my Element Zero from 3 small moons in an asteroid belt known for being mined for the stuff - after being tipped off by someone as to them being a good source.

Yes the eezo trio. Found it completely by accident but if you pay attention to the codexs they give you a rough idea what you can expect to find. Sometimes.

I was also finding more eezo on moderate planets. Rarely do I find it on rich ones.

Am I the only one playing this game that has a boatload of resources and not a dime to my name while I see all these nice shiny upgrades in stores?

 

[Lex Darko]

Actually Jordan, it doesn't matter if you head straight for the Omega 4 relay right after your crew gets abducted. Because no matter what you do, no matter how long it takes you to rescue them, you'll only find Dr. Chakwas and Kelly in the Collector base.

Actually it does matter if you go the omega relay right after they get abducted you can save the entire crew.

Also I hated scanning too, I hated it so much I started hexing my save files. I guess scanning on the 360 wouldn't be so bad if you had a turbo controller but if you were going to do that you might as well go all the way.